Life in Red
by Live2Ride2Live
Summary: Space... there's a lot of it: And when you're a low-rank, inexperienced red-shirt it seems a whole lot bigger.
1. Lost in the World

I floored the accelerator, pushing 140 MPH. The V8 engine screamed as we soared down the tarmac at the old Portland Jetport, causing a flock of seagulls resting in the warm spring sun to fly away in an angry mass. My baby was old, almost 300 years old, but she was fast… and furious. She was a 1967 Chevrolet Impala, recently restored by myself. My friends thought I was crazy for driving something so ancient, but I loved it- tearing things apart and putting them back together had always been fun for me, and that's why I became an engineer. I had so many plans for this summer, including a road trip in my new (to me) car, but Starfleet had other ideas. I was a reserve officer, having gone through basic training and indoctrination fresh out of high school, and up until the recent incident with the Romulans destroying a good chunk of the fleet, my duties were limited to drills at the local base once a month. Now most of the reservists were being put on active duty to fill in the missing numbers- I'd received my notice yesterday.

My phone went off, cutting out the music I was blasting and bringing me back to reality. I tapped the screen without looking, not wanting to veer off the tarmac and hit the chain link fence surrounding the airfield.

"Hello?"

"What are you doing right now?" came the voice of one of my best friends, Jill Maynard.

"_Cruising_… why?"

"There's a party tonight. And we're going."

"I can't go to a party, I have to report at 0500."

"So? This is the last chance we have to hang out before you go off into space for who knows how long… and we are going to get shitfaced, _Allison_, whether you like it or not."

"I can't, Jill! Can't we just do something that doesn't involve consuming mass quantities of alcohol? I can't get drunk, and then not sleep, and then go be productive… in space. It just doesn't work like that."

"Yes, you can. And you will. So go park that piece of shit and get ready!"

"Christine is _no_t a piece of shit! She's older than you are- show some respect!"

"Whatever. Be ready at seven!"

I made sure to growl my lack of enthusiasm before hanging up, and then spun the wheel to the left quickly while applying the brake, skidding around in a donut maneuver. Of course I wanted to spend time with my friends: I didn't want to leave them behind, let alone my home. Every kid wants to grow up and be independent, with no rules or parents to tell you what to do… and who _doesn't _dream of going up in space- but it was the last thing I wanted to do at this point in my life. Starfleet wouldn't make me anymore independent; I would still have to answer to authority, follow strict guidelines, and wouldn't even have the responsibilities of cooking or cleaning. And I wouldn't even be escaping my family completely- my mom was a full-fledged Starfleet officer and could probably check in on me anytime. Space did not say "freedom" to me as it did to so many others; it meant giving up my life, as I knew it, and becoming another pawn of the Federation. Of course, I was the one who decided to join the Reserve corps, so I had no one to blame but myself.

I pulled into the dirt driveway in front of my house twenty minutes later, and parked the Impala in the lot with the other cars. A big sign on the garage advertised _Danville Auto Restoration Services_, my stepfather's business. He was a brilliant mechanic, having been working on cars (and hovercrafts, of course) since he was about my age. The shop was right next to our house, and we kept our fleet of project cars on display right in front- including my own, when I wasn't driving it. I guess his interests rubbed off on me, and that was part of the reason I got an associate's degree in mechanical engineering with a concentration in aeronautics. He took me under his wing after he met my mom, only a year after I lost my real dad, and I'd been helping him with restoration projects and running the business ever since.

I went in the house, and made a quick stop to the living room where my stepdad, Tyler Danville, was watching a football game with his own dad who had become one of my 'official' grandfathers.

"You're back early," He said. "How was your drive?"

"Good. Got cut short- apparently I'm going out tonight."

"Don't you have to be at the shipyard at five am?"

"Yeah, doesn't make any difference to Jill."

"Don't drink too much," Gramps butted in. "Enjoy your last day on Earth."

"Who said anything about drinking?" I said, trying to cover up our motives and failing miserably.

"Allison, We've all been your age," Gramps said, "Just remember- liquor before beer-"

"Dad, she's 19!"

"Tyler, she's going away to war, she deserves a drink! Or three…"

I left the room to let them argue it out. I loved my family, and being around them was just making the idea of leaving for who _knows _how long all the more difficult to bear. I wasn't going to war, that I knew of, but it sure as hell felt like it. They had only come into my life when I was 7, but I felt like they had always been a part of my family. My real dad died when I was 6, in a freak accident on the USS Clinton, of which he was a Tactical officer. I'd only ever seen him when he was on shore leave, which was very little. Of course I was sad that I'd never had the father-daughter relationship with him, but such was the nature of Starfleet.

There is nothing- I repeat- _Nothing _worse than having to wake up at the crack of dawn after drinking the night away. I had not planned on drinking as much as I had, but when people are offering you celebratory shots left and right, you don't say no. I was still out of it when my alarm went off at four in the morning, and had to stumble around in the dark of my room to gather all my things. Tyler gave me a ride to the base in Brunswick, a half-hour from our house, while I tried to squeeze in a little more shut-eye. It didn't happen, thanks to my inability to sleep in anything other than a bed. We had a quick goodbye when he dropped me off, and then I had to hurry to report to my commanding officer on base. I already knew my assignment- Starbase 12, far enough away that I would have new things to look forward to but close enough to home so I wouldn't feel (too) homesick. When I found Commander Davis, he was busy frowning at something on his PADD.

"Danville, there's been a change in assignment," He said, looking a little less glum when he saw me. "Starbase 12 contacted us a few hours ago and they can't take on any more junior staff. But- there was an immediate need on board a starship." He paused, and I realized he was trying to be dramatic.

"Yes? Where?" my heart was hammering.

"The USS _Enterprise_," He said, grinning like a schoolboy.

"Seriously? The _flagship?_" I honestly thought my heart was going to explode. So many emotions were running through me, I didn't even know how to handle it. "Am I even qualified?"

"Of course you are. You have a lot more experience than a lot of the engineering crew- some of them haven't even finished their first year at the academy."

"I haven't even _been _to the academy!"

"But you've been enlisted for almost three years now _and _you have a degree. You're just as qualified if not _more _than a majority of them. You're going to do fine, I believe in you."

And so I got on the shuttle with 10 or so other people, most coming in from the other bases in the New England area, and we took off for the International Space Dock. Of course with my luck, the Enterprise was not there yet, so I had to go entertain myself in the main lobby. It was quiet in there, with most of the fleet out in the further reaches of space. I kept my eye on one of the large arrival/departure screens, waiting for The Enterprise to show up in one of the docking bays. I also took the time to read my orders for the first time on my PADD. I was assigned to engineering, naturally, working under Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, whom I'd never heard of. Of course, I'd only ever heard of the infamous James T. Kirk, the captain of the _Enterprise_.

I took the down time, waiting for my ship to come, to send out a message to my family. I didn't know when it would get there, but I knew that the Space Dock would have to have pretty good reception considering its proximity to Earth.

_Greetings from Space Dock: My assignment changed, no longer going to Star Base 12… Officially going to be an engineer on the USS Enterprise, don't panic if you can't reach me. I'll try to stay out of trouble- can't make any promises. Love you all! ~ Allison_

I was starting to really regret the last few shots I'd done the night before as soon as I set foot on the _Enterprise_. Not only was I hung over as hell; my nerves were out of control. The yeoman, Ivers, who met me at the shuttle bay was not helping them either. I tried not to be too judgmental when meeting new people, but I could tell from the shrill, overly peppy nature of her voice that she was not someone I would get along with. As exciting as it was to be on a Starship for the first time, I felt like absolute shit and wanted noting more than to get to my assigned quarters and take a nap. Yeoman Ivers had other orders for me, apparently.

"So you're from Maine, huh?" Oh great, small talk. "Do you get a lot of snow up there?"

"Yeah," I said stifling a yawn. Why did _everyone _not from the northeast _always _ask about snow? It's not like it didn't exist elsewhere!

"So, do you like skiing? Eat a lot of lobster?"

"No, not really," I said with a fake laugh. I never wanted to slam my head off a wall more than now.

Ivers explained that she was taking me to the main engineering sector for a formal introduction to my new boss. I was terrified- I was young, inexperienced, and had never been to space in my life. I was beginning to doubt my engineering skills and Starfleet training. I could fix my cars like nobody's business, but a warp capable, dilithium powered space vessel…? I took a deep breath, warding off the panic that began creeping up on me.

The engine room was immaculate, more than I ever imagined. The base back home, being a training facility primarily, was always strewn with parts everywhere. I wasn't used to seeing everything put together and pristine. Ivers led me over to a guy standing at a console, muttering to himself.

"Excuse me, Lieutenant Commander Scott?" My annoying companion said. He looked up, grinning.

"Hello," He said, giving me the once over. "Ensign Danville, I presume?

_What was that accent? British? Scottish? Irish?_

"Yes, sir," I replied.

"Welcome aboard!" He turned to Ivers."Thank you, Yeoman…?"

"Ivers, sir," She smiled flirtatiously. _Really? To a senior officer?_

"Ivers. I can take Ensign Danville from here, thank you."

Scotty, as he told me to call him (which I felt slightly uncomfortable with, considering his rank) brought me for a walk through of the Engineering bays and the warp core, and I admit I was overwhelmed. Everything was huge and shiny and brand new- not exactly my comfort zone. After my brief tour, Scotty introduced me to my supervisor, Lieutenant Spires. Spires looked the opposite of the friendly and warm Scotty- he was the gruff military type, with a chiseled jaw and his graying hair cut high and tight. I was nervous when Scotty left me alone with him to go finish my orientation.

"Welcome to the Enterprise, Ensign. I see you worked under Commander Davis?" He started, leading me into an empty conference room.

"Yes, sir."

"He's a good friend from back at the Academy. If you've picked up anything from him then we're very lucky to have you."

"Thank you, sir."

"You really don't have to keep calling me sir."

"Yes-" I had to stop myself. "Okay."

I spent the next hour taking some stupid mandatory shipboard safety tutorial while Spires linked my PADD and personal communicator up to the ship-wide network. All I got from it was that I shouldn't carry around open flame for fear of blowing something up, and not to go anywhere near a space door while open which would suck me out into the vacuum of space- very helpful.

When I was finally dismissed, I was ecstatic to get to my quarters. I wasn't expecting much, but when I got to the door marked 3F-123 and scanned myself in for the first time, I was beyond thrilled with what I had. It wasn't huge, but I had room for a bed, a closet, a desk, and a small bathroom/shower- it was perfect! I'd been expecting a double room and a roommate, so having a single room was a pleasant surprise! Of course, I was an officer, albeit a low ranking one, so that may have had something to do with it.

I didn't even bother unpacking, I immediately changed out of my uniform and threw myself into my surprisingly comfortable bed- the whole business of being on my first starship and having a real job was kind of overwhelming, and I needed to sleep off my hangover. At 0600 tomorrow I had to report to Engineering for my first day of work, but for now I had some peace and quiet.

* * *

A/N: This is a re-edit of my original first chapter- I am not happy with my writing from two years ago, and some things just don't go with the direction my story has gone… hopefully this is better than what it was originally! I plan on editing all the chapters, going to take me a while!


	2. Nobody Said it was Easy

I nearly slept through the alarm I set on my communicator, and ended up frantically getting dressed and ready to report to engineering; being late on my first day would _not _be good. Looking at myself in the mirror above the sink, I was appalled at the state of my hair; I hadn't bothered to get it done before I left home, so it was in dire need of a trim. My roots were several shades darker than the rest of my hair due to having (stupidly) lightened it in an attempt to go blond several months back. All I could do was throw it in a pony tail and smooth down the fly-a-ways as best as I could with water. I had never really taken my appearance seriously, seeing as I spent ninety percent of my life covered in engine grease, but now that I had a real job I was beginning to think I looked sloppy and unprofessional; my high school days were over, it was time to grow up and be the Starfleet officer that I was. Running out of time, I slipped on my boots, grabbed my freshly charged up PADD, and ran out the door and into the corridor.

I flashed a quick smile and a shy "Hi" at a guy in a gold command shirt as I passed him on the way to the nearest turbolift, and got one back. It wasn't until I got on the deserted lift that I considered how many stripes he had on his sleeves… Was it three? Could I have missed such a crucial detail? I didn't know what the punishment was for not saluting the captain, and I didn't want to find out if that had been him- I wasn't the most observant person, sometimes, and that always got me into trouble.

I forced myself to focus on finding my way back to main engineering- I had been instructed to report directly to Mr. Scott for my official first assignment. I breathed a sigh of relief when the lift opened into engineering- at least I found the place. My next goal was to find Scotty, and I started in the most obvious place- his office. He was in there, but he was in the middle of speaking to someone. I waited outside the door for him to finish.

"Did you try restarting it?" Scotty said. He looked up, catching my eye. "Come on in, Ensign."

"Yeah, I tried restarting it," The other guy said, a Southern twang to his voice. He looked at me from the corner of his eye as I came in the door. "Do you think I'd ask for help if that worked?"

He was wearing a blue shirt, so he had to be either science or medical, and had Lt. Commander stripes- so he could have been the chief science officer? CMO? When it came to this ship and _knowing _people, I was completely naïve.

"You ready for your first assignment?" Scotty asked, and it took me a second to realize he was speaking to me.

"Yes, sir?" My heart started doing back flips- I didn't think I'd be doing anything right off. I was so nervous that I'd mess up and do something stupid and embarrass myself…

"Good!"

"Wait, wait, wait- you're sending your brand new engineer to fix my delicate machinery?" He was giving me the once over.

"Relax, I'm not going to let her destroy your sickbay," Mr. Scott said, handing me a tool kit. "Ensign Danville, this is our Chief Medical Officer, Dr. McCoy. McCoy, this is Ensign Danville."

Thus transpired my first real work assignment on the _USS Enterprise_. I didn't know much about the use of medical equipment, but I did know the mechanics of them. A few of the bio-beds and the vital sign charts were not working, which at first seemed like a power supply problem- I, with Mr. Scott's help, found that the power supply was fine but several of the fuses had shorted out, burning a lot of the wiring. It was a tedious process, but fairly easy to get everything fixed. Electrical engineering was always my favorite field, as it came easily to me- you didn't have to use a lot of equations or anything, you just had to know how everything gets pieced together and works as a system. Changing headlights, wiring an audio system, fixing a control panel… cars and starships were very similar. McCoy had been muttering something about Starfleet hiring "kids" to work on Starships, and I had to bite my tongue. I was almost twenty, I didn't exactly consider myself a kid: I'd been able to vote for almost two years! I refrained from doing a victory dance when we switched the power on and the vital sign charts came to life, I didn't want to rub it in this Dr. McCoy's face that I was in fact capable of doing my job regardless of my youth. Hell, pretty much everyone on the ship looked around my age anyway, maybe even younger!

I got to experience my first shower in space as soon as I got back to my quarters, and while it was very nice- it wasn't anything special. I just didn't want to find out what it would be like if the artificial gravity went out while I was in it! After ditching my uniform shirt for the plain black one, I plopped onto my twin-sized bed and turned my PADD on. My heart fluttered in excitement when I saw I had a video message.

"_Hi, Ally,"_ My mom said, and I could see she was in a hotel room, somewhere. _"I hope this message gets to you okay. How are you holding up? I can't believe you're on a ship already; it seems like just yesterday you were starting high school! I'm really proud of you. Please be safe. Stay in touch. I love you!"_

The video ended, and I immediately started recording my return message.

"Hey Mom! I'm doing all right, haven't done very much… still settling in. My boss is great- everyone else seems nice. Haven't seen very much of the ship, but it's HUGE… very shiny. I'll give you a little tour!"

I switched to back camera mode, and began walking around filming my quarters.

"This is my bed, I haven't made it… And here's my desk, which I probably won't use… and this is the bathroom… and," I pressed the panel to open my door, and went out into the hall. "This is the _Enterprise!"_

And of course, just my luck, there was someone walking by my door at precisely that moment. I could have died of embarrassment, but the passerby played along.

"How's it going?" He said, winking at the PADD.

"Sorry!" I apologized, ending the recording, and feeling incredibly awkward. And to make things worse, it was the guy from earlier this morning… and he _did _have captain's stripes. Oh, shit.

"No worries," The swarthy blond said, holding out his hand. "I'm Jim Kirk."

"You're the captain?" I said, shaking his hand and hoping my voice wasn't really as squeaky as it sounded to me at the moment.

"The very same. You must be Ensign Danville?"

"Y-yeah. You can call me Allison, if you'd like. Or Danville, either works." I sputtered. _Please don't think I'm a total idiot…_

"Nice to meet you, Allison. How do you like the ship so far?"

"It's great. It's… sparkly." _Wow, sparkly? Is that really all you can think of to say?_

"Yes, it is quite _sparkly_." He laughed. "I'm going to the mess to get some food, would you like to join?"

"Yeah, sure! Just let me um… get some shoes on."

"Okay," He looked amused at my awkwardness; I couldn't help it, I'm always shy. "I'll meet you at the turbo lift."

"Sounds good," I said meekly, and turned to go back into my room. He went down the hall, and turned… directly next-door. I quickly opened my door and ran in to grab my boots. I stopped by the bathroom to check myself out before leaving: my curly hair was a damp mess, I didn't have makeup on (well, I never had it on), and I was looking slightly sub-par for a dinner with the (very handsome) captain.

Dinner wasn't _as _awkward as I was convinced it would be. We sat with three other people, a woman and two guys. She was introduced to me as Uhura (I couldn't tell if it was her first or last name, it worked either way), the younger looking guy was Pavel Chekov, and the other was Hikaru Sulu. I assumed these people were part of the bridge crew. They asked me questions about myself the whole time, and I felt great that they were interested in "the new kid", but I was embarrassed by how un-interesting I was.

"I never saw you in any of the engineering classes at the Academy," Kirk mentioned.

"You wouldn't have, I never went."

"But you're an ensign…" Sulu looked a little confused.

"I was in reserves… I enlisted when I was still in high school…" I explained.

"How old _are _you, if you don't mind me asking?" Uhura asked.

"I'll be twenty in October."

"Good, I'm still ze youngest!" Chekov exclaimed, pumping the air in victory.

After dinner, Kirk and I walked back to our hall together, and bid each other good night. I stayed up long enough to finish my video recording for my mom, telling her about my dinner with the captain and some of the bridge officers, and then sent it out where eventually it would transmit to Earth. My alarm set to 0600, I finally drifted off to sleep.

* * *

Morning always comes too early, especially in space where it is undistinguishable from nighttime. Forcing myself out of my comfy bed to get ready to work was a difficult task. I got down to engineering twenty minutes later, not so bright eyed and bushy tailed but ready to work nonetheless. Lt. Spires looked up as I shuffled in, still half asleep.

"Mornin'," He said. "Haven't quit yet?"

"We're too far from Earth, aren't we?"

Now that I thought about it, what happened if someone did quit? Do they ship you back to Earth? Ditch you on some random planet far out in the galaxy?

"Are you awake enough to do some auxiliary systems training?" Spires asked.

"Yeah, sure," I wasn't even awake enough to process what he had just said- auxiliary systems? What?

"Good. The quicker we get you're qualifications done the better. You're doing good so far, Danville."

Thank goodness! I needed a little positive reinforcement in my life, I hadn't done much yet but everything was still so new and overwhelming.

We spent four hours in the auxiliary control room, first going over red alert protocol, and then learning how to access the ship's main computer, have total engine control and steer the ship- all from that one little room. Obviously, I didn't get much "hands on" training, but it all seemed very straightforward… and what were the chances of me ever having to take control, anyway? So, basically, if a bunch of crazy space hippies or something took over the ship, and I was the only engineer in the vicinity for some reason, I could probably save the ship- I guess that's a reassuring thought.

At the end of my shift I got in the turbo lift to go back to my quarters. I hadn't had much to socialize, but one of my fellow engineers got in with me.

"Hey, you must be the new girl?" He said. My heart fluttered as I looked at him- dark hair, dark eyes, and perfect smile... I hated talking to cute guys; I always felt extremely self-conscious.

"That's me."

"Lt. Steele," He said, holding out his hand.

"Ensign Danville. " I said, taking his hand. I could feel myself blushing.

"It's nice to have some new blood around here. You spend enough time around the same people you start to go crazy."

I couldn't help but giggle. It wasn't even funny; I just didn't know how to act. The lift was taking _way _too long.

"So, Danvers, there's a little get together in the crew lounge tomorrow night. You're welcome to come!"

I didn't even bother to correct him on my name.

"Sure, I'd love to!"

"Great!" He said, "Is this your stop?"

"What?"

It took me a moment to realize the lift had stopped, and I was looking out onto my floor.

"Oh, yeah, it is!" I hurried out the door, nearly tripping over my own feet.

"2100, crew lounge. Be there!"

"I will!" I called after the closing doors.

_Oh, Allison, why can't you talk to boys without acting like a complete idiot? Oh, right- you are an idiot!_

That night I could barely get to sleep out of the sheer excitement of making friends with a gorgeous guy _and _being invited to a secret crew party. I didn't even know what to expect, but my mind was full of stupid fantasies of how I wanted the night to go… I guess life on the _Enterprise _wasn't going to be all work and no play after all!


	3. Bottoms Up

I spent my whole shift the next day fretting about the "get together". I didn't know what to wear, I didn't know what to expect… I didn't even know why I said I'd go! Lt. Steele was obviously just trying to be nice and invite me because I was new on board, but my mind kept twisting the encounter into being something more. I showed up at the crew lounge just after 2100, not wanting to be the one person to show up early, dressed in my off duty uniform- I didn't know what else to wear and gave up. I scanned the dimly lit room, which was surprisingly full of people. There were a few games of beer pong going on, and everyone was socializing- I on the other hand knew nobody. I nearly jumped as someone tapped my shoulder.

"Hey, Danville! Want a drink?"

Lt. Steele was drinking something that was a strange shade of green.

"Yeah, sure!"

_20 drinks would be good._

He brought me to the makeshift bar and poured a couple shots worth of the same green liquid into a glass filled with ice.

"What is that?"

"It's called a Rigellian Breeze," He said, handing it to me. I took a sip and nearly spat it out.

"There is nothing _breezy _about that!" I choked. He laughed.

"If you think that's bad, don't even think about trying Romulan Ale!"

He grabbed my arm and brought me over to one of the groups playing a game of beer pong, and began introducing me to them. A couple I recognized, as they were also engineers, but the rest were security, communications and sciences so I'd never seen them around. I watched the game going on, and when it was done I found myself being forced into the next round with Steele as my partner. I hated playing beer pong- I sucked; there was no other way to describe my skill level. It was a good thing I was already getting tipsy off my first drink, so at least I could blame it on that. After missing almost every shot until I made a fluke shot and got one in, Steele finally won the game for us and I backed out of playing another round (to no protest from anyone else). I put away another Rigellian Breeze while I watched Steele and one of his buddies playing the next round. It only took me until the third drink to realize I was drunk, and by that point I was already feeling sick; that was the down side of beverages from other planets, sometimes they were stronger than humans were used to- and being a light weight anyway, there was no hope for me from the get-go. I crept away from Steele's group, needing to drink some water or something to sober up a little.

"Hey new girl," Someone said, and I could feel my muscles tense up automatically at the annoying timbre of her voice. Yeoman Ivers, the first person I ever spoke to on the Enterprise. I wanted so badly to call her out for speaking to me like that when I was an officer and she was not, but then I remembered that we were not in uniform and it didn't really matter.

"Hi," I said, grabbing a beer out of the cooling unit rather than the water I'd originally intended to get. If I had to listen to this woman, I didn't want to be sober.

"So, you've been hanging around Carl all night. That was a… um, _exciting_ game you guys played there."

I laughed, trying to play dumb: she was obviously making fun of me.

"His name's Carl? Didn't know that." That wasn't a lie; I really hadn't cared to ask.

"Well, it's Lieutenant Steele to you… he's _my_ boyfriend, I call him by his first name." She said, sneering as nicely as she could. I could feel anger boiling up inside me. I couldn't understand why she was trying to start shit, but I knew that she was already.

_Be cool, Danville, be cool…_

"Well, congrats!" I took a huge swig of my beer, nearly gagging. It didn't taste so great after the hard bite of the surprisingly addicting Rigellian Breezes. I looked over her shoulder and realized that two other yeomen were staring me down, obviously friends of hers. She really must have been trying to instigate something if she called for backup.

"Yeah, so you should probably stop flirting with him, because he's taken."

_Oh, no she didn't._

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize that talking to my coworker was considered flirting. I _guess_ that explains the making out whenever we're checking the warp core. _Huh?_"

I thought I was being pretty funny, but apparently she didn't. One moment I was standing there and grinning like an idiot, the next I was on the ground spitting out a mouthful of blood. I'd never been punched before, so it took me a few seconds to realize what had happened. The beer I was holding had slipped out of my hand when I fell, shattering on the floor and making those people standing near us step back a bit. I scrambled to my feet, not sure if my lack of motor coordination was from the blow or if I was drunker than I thought I was_. _

"Seriously? That's all you've got?" I laughed, wiping the blood away from my busted lip.

Ivers didn't even give me a chance to catch my breath, and it was on. She grabbed my hair in her fist and yanked forward, pulling me off balance. I instinctively had put my hand out to stop my fall, forgetting about the shattered glass; I felt some slice into my skin, but was too busy trying to defend myself that I didn't have time to feel the pain. She had a few pounds on me, and considering she was part of the Security team she definitely had more combat skill- I had absolutely no chance of winning this fight. I got one good hit in, getting her right in the left eye, but it wasn't enough to redeem myself. It was all over in seconds, when Security broke it up. Someone hoisted me to my feet and pinned my arms behind my back; I didn't even bother struggling, there was no reason to get myself into more trouble than I already was.

"Who started this?" A big guy with a goatee asked the room- it appeared that everyone had come to watch the action. I wanted to cry tears of joy when pretty much everyone looked right at Ivers.

"Get her to medical," He said to the security guy holding me back. "Party's over."

I was able to walk myself out without the security officer, who introduced himself as Ensign Roth, helping me. All the adrenaline pumping through my body was numbing the pain. When we got to medical bay, the nurse on duty had me sit on one of the biobeds where she began cleaning up my battle wounds. Ensign Roth asked me some questions about what happened to escalate the situation, and I told him everything- it really was a stupid fight, and I was still in shock that it had actually happened. I'd never had an enemy before, and now after barely being on the Enterprise for a week I already had one.

"What the hell happened?" The CMO, Doctor McCoy, strode over from his office, looking a little tired and obviously cranky. He took one look at me, and smirked. "It's always the quiet ones."

"Sorry," I said.

"What are you apologizing to me for?" He said, picking up a tricorder. "Nurse Chapel, I can take over from here."

I tried to sit still as he ran the tricorder over me, but the room was spinning too much for me to do so.

"Will you sit _still? _What are you, drunk?"

Ivers didn't kick my ass _too _bad- nothing was broken, but my lip had already swelled to the point of me not being able to close my mouth all the way, and several pieces of broken glass had been embedded in my palm. My pride had taken the biggest hit; I didn't know how I was going to be able to work with Steele again and _not _feel awkward for being assaulted by his girlfriend. McCoy was just finishing up putting a dermal patch on my hand when the medical bay doors opened, and the captain walked in.

"Bones!" He called, striding over. _Bones?_

"What do you want, Jim?" McCoy sighed.

"I heard there was some excitement but I missed it," He grinned at me. "What did you _do?"_

"Nothing!" I said. "I was minding my own business."

"I'm sure," He said. I couldn't tell if he was trying to discipline me or tease me. "What I don't understand is why I was not invited to this party you all had."

"Because you're the captain?" I offered.

"And consumption of alcohol is prohibited on Starfleet vessels…" McCoy added.

"Never stopped you, Bones." Kirk smirked.

"_I'm_ not underage," McCoy rebutted. "You're free to go, Ensign. Stay out of trouble."

I had a feeling that on this ship, with _these _people in the highest-ranking positions, that was going to be an impossible task. Trouble was inevitable out here in the expanse; I was going to have to try hard to survive day to day.


	4. Job Well Done

I woke up feeling a little worse for wear, and very, very stiff and sore. My shower was much longer than usual as the hot water was the only thing making me feel a little bit more human. I still managed to get ready for my shift with time to spare, so I stopped by the mess to get a much-needed coffee before heading down to engineering. I checked in with Lt. Spires for my day's assignment.

"What happened to you? You look like hell."

I didn't have the energy to bother with putting on makeup over my bruised face, which had swelled a little more overnight. My lip was so big it was difficult for me to sip my coffee, let alone speak.

"Don't want to talk about it," I said. "Ask anyone else, I'm sure there's great stories."

"I heard there was a fight, I just didn't expect it to involve you."

"I'm full of surprises."

I worked on engine diagnostics for most of my shift until Mr. Scott came and asked me to take over writing status reports for him while he checked something down in the shuttle bay. The worst part about working for Starfleet, was reporting to Starfleet; our ship's business couldn't just be our business, they had to know every little thing just in case they didn't like something and decided to order our asses back home- got to love a bureaucracy.

I was sitting at Mr. Scott's desk; on the verge of falling asleep, writing a lengthy report on a scheduled warp core maintenance check, when the communication panel on the wall beeped. I waited, expecting someone else to answer it elsewhere in engineering. I got up and answered it on the third chime.

"Engineering- Ensign Danville speaking."

"Danville, it's Kirk. Is Scotty around?"

"No, he's in the shuttle bay."

"Of course. Well, while I have you there, Danville: in three days we are going to reach the new Starfleet outpost on planet ZX-27-09; they need an engineering team to assist in some system setups. Do you think you can stay out of trouble long enough to go on this away mission?"

"Don't you want people with more experience?"

"How do you think you _get _experience? If you're going to be an engineering officer on this ship I want to see what you can bring to the crew. No pressure."

"I guess I can try to behave myself, sir."

"Good! Kirk out."

Three days later, I was certain I was going to have a nervous breakdown. I couldn't fall asleep the night before the away mission, and didn't doze off until a few hours before my alarm; I was too busy having worst-case scenarios running through my head. I spent my morning prep time convincing myself that we were just going to a Starfleet outpost, and nothing bad could possibly happen to us. I'd never been on the surface of any planet other than Earth, so while this was probably a walk in the park for everyone else it was a huge deal to me.

Thankfully, we weren't beaming down; had been in a transporter once over a short distance during my basic training and didn't particularly enjoy it. I headed down to the shuttle bay; I got increasingly panicky with every step I took. The away party was clustered outside the shuttle _Galileo_. I was one of four redshirts, two whom I'd never worked with before and the other being Scotty. Scotty introduced me to the other engineers: Lt. Leah Tremblay and Lt. Junior Grade Jake Hunt. Captain Kirk and the Vulcan science officer, Commander Spock, who I hadn't met yet but had heard much about, soon joined us.

"Scotty, we ready to go?"

"Aye, Captain."

We got in the shuttle and got buckled in; I thought we were going to take right off, but there was a bit of commotion going on outside the shuttle door.

"I don't see why I have to go, couldn't you take someone else?"

"No, Bones, we need you!"

"Jim, I don't think anyone's going to get hurt at a Starfleet outpost, it sounds _pretty _safe to me."

In came Dr. McCoy looking pale and wild-eyed. He sat down next to me and strapped himself in. He was trying so hard to stay calm that he was shaking. Kirk came in behind him, grinning in amusement.

"If you get too scared, I'm sure Ensign Danville will hold your hand," He teased. McCoy grumbled something incoherent, but I knew it involved a four-letter word.

The flight down only took about 20 minutes, but it felt so much longer. Of course, I was the unfortunate soul who had to sit next to Dr. McCoy, who looked like he was going to spew any second. I had a deep desire to mess around with him, to say something about turbulence or a crack in the hull, but decided against it- somehow I felt it wasn't a good idea to piss off the only guy that could save our asses if something went wrong (no matter how entertaining it would be). When we got out of the shuttle, I was a little let down by the scenery. It looked exactly like Earth, basically. The sky was the same, the grass _may _have been a little greener, and the trees were similar… not too much difference for it to be strange and new to me.

"Dammit, it's freezing down here." McCoy muttered beside me.

"It's not bad."

"Oh, yeah I forgot… you're from the arctic, aren't you?"

"Maine… but close enough."

We were met by a couple Starfleet officers, and led inside the new base. It smelled like new paint and was eerily quiet. Lt. Commander Colvin, the guy in charge of the whole operation, told us that there were currently only 20 people stationed there, and that they just needed some extra help to get the computer systems up and running. That's where we Engineers came in. As soon as we got to the main computer access room, and the other non-engineers went off to do something, Scotty put us to work.

Six hours later, we were done. There were only four engineers on base here, so they had really needed the extra hands with their system setup. It was tedious work, and not very challenging or exciting, but I felt good and accomplished when we were finished. We had dinner with the outpost crew, and then took off in the shuttle back to the Enterprise. McCoy complained to me about doing nothing all day, and how coming down was a "Goddamn waste of time" and that he had to put up with "That green-blooded, pointy eared bastard."

We got back to the Enterprise, safe and sound, and went our separate ways; my way just happened to be the same way Kirk and McCoy were going, and we ended up in the turbo-lift together.

"Good job today, Ensign." Kirk said.

"Thank you, sir."

There was a moment of silence, before McCoy interrupted it.

"And I didn't do a good job?"

"You didn't do anything." Kirk replied.

"Exactly my point! I could have stayed up here, perfectly safe and happy, but NO you had to drag me along. Someone could have been dying up here and I would have been to preoccupied with looking at satellite arrays and all that bullshit to help them!"

"Bones, you sound like you need a drink."

"Yes. Yes, I do."


	5. Friends?

A month and a half went by from when I left home behind and joined the crew of the Enterprise. My workload and responsibilities were increasing, and I was starting to make friends with my shift-mates. I considered myself lucky that I had yet to run into Yeoman Ivers after the incident, but I saw Lt. Steele all the time seeing as we both worked in engineering; he didn't talk to me, or even look at me; It was no great loss, he didn't even try to step in when his girlfriend was beating me up and was pretty much the cause of the whole thing. Ivers, I had found out through the grape vine, had been in the brig for a day and was on probationary status until further notice.

On a starship, I discovered, you can't avoid people forever. I went off duty at 0400 after working the entire morning, and was really looking forward to going to my quarters to catch some sleep. I had the turbo lift to myself until it got half way between Engineering sector and my deck, and in walked Yeoman Ivers. My heart raced, palms sweating, fight or flight mode going full force. She looked as shocked as I felt to run into me like this.

"Danville."

"Ivers." I said, suddenly feeling small and scared, although I really wanted to say something tough and revenge-worthy.

Ivers closed the doors and stopped the lift before it resumed its course, then faced me. She took a deep breath, and I prepared for the worst.

"Look, about that night-" I started.

"No," She interrupted. "You don't have to say anything. It's all my fault. I got the wrong idea, and lost my cool. I was completely out of line."

I opened my mouth to say something, but she cut me off.

"You see- Carl broke up with me the day before, and I was pissed that he was already talking to someone else. I just snapped. I'm so, so sorry that I hurt you."

She was actually crying, and I honestly hoped she wasn't faking.

"It's understandable, but you don't have to worry- I'm not into him at all, we just work together."

"It's not understandable, I went full out psycho on you!" She laughed. "Seriously, I don't think I can ever make it up to you, but I hope that you can forgive me."

I restarted the turbo lift, and a few seconds later it opened on my deck.

"Just watch my back if I ever need help, and I'll consider you forgiven. Okay?"

Ivers smiled.

"It's a deal."

I got back to my quarters, still shocked about what had just transpired. I'd never been in a fight before I met her, and thus had never dealt with this sort of awkward relationship. Was I really supposed to just let bygones be bygones because she said sorry? How was jealousy an acceptable excuse for her kicking my ass?

I didn't think I was going to be able to clear my mind enough to sleep, so I decided to spend some time sending messages back home. It had been weeks since I heard anything from anyone back on Earth, and I was missing everyone. I knew my mom would be on my case if I didn't check in every now and then. I sent short messages to my mom, step-dad and stepbrother Jesse (who was in his last year of med-school), and then sent a longer message to my best friend, Jill; I needed her advice on this new situation. If I valued anyone's opinion, it was Jill's. Not only did we go through high school together, we had experienced some of our most important life's moments together, good and bad. Almost two years prior to me coming aboard the Enterprise, Jill and I had gone on a road trip from Maine to New Jersey in my step dads Camaro, and it went drastically wrong. She had just broken up with her boyfriend of one year, and he hadn't handled it as well as she had. We got as far as the New Hampshire border when he crashed his motorcycle into our car, having been following us without us knowing. He died instantly while we were unharmed. There is nothing that strengthens bonds of friendship like being investigated for vehicular manslaughter together.

Over the next few days, we were preparing to go to a planet called Sigma Alpha (I couldn't help but imagine a planet full of men in togas paddling each other and doing keg stands). I didn't know much about it, other than what we were debriefed on prior to arrival: it was an Earth colony and a trading outpost. We were responding to a low priority distress call since we were the closest ship in that sector.

We reached the planet two days after our debriefing. I was working in the warp core when we got the instruction to switch to impulse, and assisted with shutting the warp drive down. A lot of us were just standing around, waiting for the ship to enter the planet's orbit so we could then switch off impulse drive.

"Danville!" Someone called. I was watching our status on a view screen, waiting for something to do. I turned around to come face to face with Lt. Spires.

"Yeah?"

"You're needed in the transporter room."

"Why?"

"You're probably being put on the away team. Have fun."

I took the turbo lift to the transporter room and found a pretty sizeable group there waiting. The only person I really knew was Lt. Tremblay, so I went and stood with her. She greeted me, but then we stood there quietly in nervous anticipation. There were four security officers, two other engineers that I didn't know yet, Dr. McCoy, Captain Kirk, Commander Spock, and Ensign Chekov. I wondered what we needed with so many people.

We beamed down in small groups. I hadn't been transported since I was in basic training, and I wasn't looking forward to it. My first experience had been a huge shock to my system, and I had only been beamed about the length of a football field- now I had to go from the ship down to the planet's surface... I stood on the pad, and when I heard the strange whirring noise that meant the buffer was being engaged, I had to close my eyes and remind myself to breathe. It was over before I knew it, and when I opened my eyes again I was relieved to see I was still in one piece. I didn't realize I was frozen in place until someone clapped me on the shoulder.

"Okay, Ensign?" Kirk said, jolting me out of my reverie.

"Yeah," I said, taking a deep breath.

We all regrouped while Kirk addressed us.

"We are now about a mile from the city. Mr. Chekov will be sending a satellite navigation map… thing… to your PADDs. We tried to establish communication, but could not get through to anyone. Spock and I are going into the city to see what is going on."

He turned to the security guys.

"Davis and Connors, you'll be coming with us, keep phasers on stun. Kyle, Tremblay, I may need you both as well. The rest of you: stay here, sit tight- we may be here a while. We will keep in touch. McCoy- you're in charge while I'm gone."

Kirk, Spock, and the others walked off in the direction of the city, and I felt a little jealous that I wasn't part of the group. The rest of us got busy doing nothing. McCoy looked pissed beyond belief that he had to be in charge.

One of the security guys procured a deck of cards out of his pocket, and the six of us started up a game of blackjack to pass the time. Never in a million years would I have thought that my career in Starfleet would involve sitting around on strange (or not so different than Earth, in this instance) planets being bored out of my mind. The more time that went on, the tenser we were all getting, expecting to hear the chirp of a communicator at any given moment.

We didn't hear anything for some time, and we managed to squeeze in several rounds of blackjack. Ensign Ishihara was kicking our asses, and she turned out not to be as quiet as I originally thought she was. We were actually starting to enjoy ourselves and get a little boisterous when my communicator started chirping. We all froze, and I fumbled to get it off my belt to answer it while everyone stared at me.

"Danville, here."

"It's Tremblay. We've got a little situation."

"What's going on?"

"There's not much time to explain, but there's several vehicles heading your way with heavily armed people. Something tells me they are not a welcoming committee."

McCoy got up and snatched the communicator out of my hand.

"McCoy here," He said. "How close are they?"

"They are going to be on top of you any minute- there was a delay in this transmission, there's some interference going on… I would have warned you sooner."

Before McCoy could say anything, there were several sets of headlights coming in around us. Some of the men got out of the jeeps, and came in at our group holding large assault rifles. The way were being crowded in I felt a little like cattle.

"Who's in charge here?" Some guy said in a heavy eastern European accent. He didn't sound much like our friendly Chekov, but I assumed he was Russian.

"Don't say anything," I whispered to McCoy.

"Shut up. Take this." He hissed, and I felt him pressing something into my side- the communicator. I quickly stashed it in my undershirt, hoping none of our captors saw me doing so.

"I'm in charge." McCoy stated with authority.

"You are with Starfleet, yes?"

"We are. Who are you?"

A few more of the jeeps pulled up as we stood there, and more armed men got out. They lined us up, and I wondered if they were going to shoot us down like a firing squad. They announced that we were now being taken as hostages, and would be taking our weapons and communicators away. I got frisked even though I said I had nothing on me, and considered myself lucky when they didn't grope my chest and find my hidden communicator.

My mind was busy searching for ways to escape, wondering ig I should make a run for it to get us help. I wasn't paying attention so much to what was going on around me, then as to _what _was around me. There wasn't really anywhere to run off to, but I had a lot of resources available to me… if I could jack one of their guns, I could probably negotiate... or not, I don't think I would know what to do with one if I had one anyway!

I sat down on the ground next to Chekov. They hadn't tied us up or anything; they just surrounded us and told us not to do anything stupid. That was where my problem started- I had trouble not doing stupid things, especially when under this much pressure.

"Any brilliant ideas for escape?" I asked Chekov.

"No," He said. "I wasn't really thinking about it… what about you?"

"I've considered some options, but most of them end in getting us all killed."

And then inspiration struck. And it struck hard.

"Walk with me." I said, standing up.

Before he could protest, I started walking away. There was a little bit of a distraction going on for the guards, as the guy in charge was making McCoy call the captain on a communicator… I couldn't hear what was being said, but I assumed there was some kind of negotiating going on.

"What are you doing?" Chekov whispered, catching up with me.

"Get in the Jeep. Be quiet, don't draw attention." I said, hoping he could actually hear me, I was whispering so softly. I headed for the driver's side door. Before I jumped right in (It was door less like many jeeps are, fortunately) I checked around to see if any of them were watching. We were in the clear.

"Yes! There's a key!" I hissed to Chekov, who climbed in nervously. "Buckle up."

I buckled myself in, and started the engine. That's when they took notice. I reversed full speed, not even bothering to look and see if anything was in my way. Some of the guys were running after us on foot, and the smarter ones were getting in their own vehicles to pursue us. I pushed the accelerator as close to the floor as I could get it, and the jeep's engine whined in protest. The wheel was shaking with the sheer stress that I was putting on it to go faster, and I had to hold it in a death grip to stay our course.

"You should get down, I think they're going to start shooting!"

Sure enough, they did. These were definitely not phasers, as there was a distinct sound of something hard springing off of metal each time they shot. I kept myself as low down as possible while still being able to see to drive. I glanced at Chekov and couldn't tell if he was smiling or if it was a look of horror on his face.

"You okay?" I asked, going over a large bump and nearly biting off the tip of my tongue.

"Yes, if you can call it that. You're a little bit insane, Danville."

"Only a little, Chekov." Truthfully, I was kissing my Starfleet career goodbye- and that constituted as criminally insane for all I knew.

I checked the mirrors, which were hard to see when trying to keep my head down. Three of the jeeps had gained on us, and I assumed more were not far behind. I held the wheel in one hand while I pulled the communicator out from under my shirt. I tossed it to Chekov, who adjusted it to the Enterprise's frequency.

"Enterprise," Someone said on the other end.

"Ensign Chekov, here. We need assistance!"

There was only static in response, clipped with fragments of words.

"Can't… you.. Can…r me?"

Chekov tried to establish a better connection, but it was a lost cause.

"So much for that part of the plan," I mumbled. Actually, I had no plan; I was literally flying by the seat of my pants. "Pull up that map, am I going the right way?"

He pulled out his PADD, and quickly found what we needed.

"Yes, almost there! We are close to ze research center!"

"Good! Just wish we could lose these guys."

Losing a tail isn't the easiest thing to do… especially when you're driving identical vehicles; our situation wasn't looking good… my plan was failing… my plan that didn't exist.

"They're turning!" Chekov exclaimed.

"Seriously?" I nearly screamed, checking the mirrors. Sure enough, they were. It looked like they were heading back the way we came. "Hah! Giving up so easily!"

Once they disappeared out of sight, and their taillights became merely pinpricks, I took my foot off the accelerator. The speed began dropping: 100… 85… 65- I kept it at that.

"Something doesn't seem right," Chekov said.

"Yeah, they know they're no match for my superior driving skills."

"No… They wouldn't just back off like that, it doesn't make sense!"

Chekov was right, and I was letting the adrenaline get to my head. Headlights blared at us from up front- somehow they had snuck around us without us seeing or hearing them. The advantage hadn't been mine from the get-go- these people knew the area; they probably had a shortcut that had allowed them to intercept us. The gunfire started again, and one of my tires blew out. I barely had time to panic about that when the most extreme, mind-blowing pain I had ever experienced ripped through my leg. I screamed, momentarily losing control of the vehicle. Chekov grabbed the wheel.

"You're hit?"

"Yes I'm fucking hit!" I shrieked, gritting my teeth and trying to deep-breathe my way through the intensity of the pain. I chanced a look downward, and nearly passed out just from looking at my leg. I had been hit in the thigh, just above my knee. I couldn't tell where the blood ended and my flesh began, it was already a complete mess. Never in my life would I have expected to get shot with an actual bullet, and now there I was. I didn't even know if I would live to brag about it to all my friends.

I could see lights glimmering up ahead, and it was definitely not headlights this time. _'Almost there… Hold on just a little bit longer.' _They shot out another tire. The Jeep kept going, but it was all I could do to keep it on a straight course. Chekov yelped, clutching his right shoulder.

"Dammit, you too?"

"I think it just grazed me!"

We were getting so close to the tiny little town, which consisted of a handful of buildings. Kirk and Spock had to be in there somewhere. Now I had to worry about getting Chekov there to get help- I knew I myself had no chance of making it there.

"If we bail, can you run?" I asked.

"Yes, can you?"

"I'll do my best. Run fast, okay?"

"I won ze Starfleet Marathon, I think I can run pretty fast."

"Great. We'll jump out on three!"

I slammed on the brakes, and began my count. The jeep grinded to a halt, and at three we both jumped out. He hit the ground running, and I literally hit the ground. I forced myself to my feet with all my willpower, only able to get myself going with sheer adrenaline. I was a few feet behind Chekov, limping horribly and my leg about to give out at any moment. Chekov turned around and made to come help me, but I waved him away.

"Go! Don't worry about me. Get yourself there, find captain Kirk!"

"I'm not leaving you!"

"Just go!"

I went down, and knew I wasn't getting up again. They were on me in seconds, and I felt something cold and metal on the back of my head as I lay face first in the grass. My hands were yanked roughly behind my back, and someone forced me to my feet. They were shouting in Russian, and I didn't understand a single word. I was man handled into the back seat of one of the jeeps, and sat between two men who had their weapons trained on me. It was all I could do to keep conscious while I felt my body start to shut down to protect me from the pain. I knew one of two things was certain- either my Starfleet career was going to end, or I was going to die here on this strange planet, so far from home.


	6. Runaway

I must have passed out during the ride in the jeep, as one moment I was riding along under armed guard, and the next I woke up to a bright light being shined into my eyes. I looked up, blinking dazedly at one of my captors.

"Wake up, Starfleet girl." The guy said, his thick accent sounding more comical than menacing.

I looked around the small room I was in, my vision spinning every time I moved my head a little. I was in a metal folding chair, sitting at a small card table in a room lit by a fluorescent light that kept sputtering out; I don't think it could possibly have been more appropriate for an interrogation. I was surprised to see that I wasn't cuffed or tied up or anything, not that I had the capability of escaping anyway.

"What is your name?" The man asked, sitting down across from me.

I kept my mouth shut. I hadn't exactly been trained on how to act in this type of situation, but I did know that it was better to be silent then say something that could get me killed.

"The faster you get talking, the easier this will be."

"No, thank you." _Wow. Smooth._

"That's a start. At least I know you can speak."

The guy smirked, and pulled out a communicator. He said something in Russian, and I wished I had at least a minor understanding of the language… or Chekov to translate. Another guy came in the room, and set something down on the table. It was a pistol- not a phaser, a regular, bullet-shooting pistol. If they were trying to scare me it was working.

"Well then, I guess I will start. My name is Emir. And yours?"

I snorted.

"What is so funny?"

"The fact that you think I'll cooperate. Do whatever you want, I can do this all day."

"Can you now?"

It was fast, so fast I didn't have time to do anything but scream as the shots rang out. He'd grabbed the pistol, raised it up and pulled the trigger. I expected to feel more bullets ripping through me, but when I felt my heart racing and my body shaking out of fear I knew I was okay.

"I can just as easily put one through your head. Does that sound like something you would be interested in?"

"Allison!" I screamed, involuntarily. "My name is Allison."

"I knew you would talk, Allison."

He kept asking more questions, some simple and non-revealing, some I didn't have an answer for. The ever increasing pain I was in combined with the fear that he'd use the pistol on me were enough to keep me talking, but I was getting restless as time went on.

"What use could you possibly have for that?" I laughed, expecting something more dramatic. The fact that I probably couldn't even help him made it even better.

"If you cooperate, then you will see. Now, are you going to give us the codes or are we doing this the hard way?"

I just smirked.

He nodded to the other guy, who grabbed me under my arm and pulled me to my feet. I groaned as putting pressure on my leg sent shooting pain through it, and would have fallen if he hadn't been holding me up. I was marched out of the room, limping and on the verge of vomiting or passing out. We walked out into a parking lot where some of the jeeps were parked at the ready. I was unceremoniously shoved in the back seat of one, and two guys got on either side of me with their guns trained on me. They pulled out of the gated parking lot, and I briefly saw the small warehouse we'd just come out of as we pulled out of the gate. Who the hell were these guys and what were they doing here under Starfleet's noses? It was a quick drive, and then we were outside the base. I was once again manhandled to my feet, and forced to stand while four of the guys scouted ahead to make sure the area was clear. I was marched up to a door that was highly secured; no way they could have broken it down. I took a look at the security panel and knew they expected me to do something- I had to delay it as long as I could.

"It's not going to let me in if you're all standing around me- there's sensors."

Second in Command barked an order, and all but him and the guy holding me up backed up a few feet. I placed my palm on the panel, and it took a few seconds to scan. It beeped angrily at me, and I took my hand away. A warning came up on the screen along with a number key.

_Access denied: enter override code._

"This might take a while," I said, looking over at my captor buddy.

"Hurry."

I started entering random numbers, not even trying. After the first wrong one, it started the angry beeping again and I had to try another one. That failed as I expected.

_One try remaining to system lockout._

And then there was a pistol pointing at my temple. I froze, not knowing what to do now. I wasn't doing a very good job of buying myself time, shit just got real.

"Times wasting, miss Danville."

"I need to think! There's too many codes it could be. I could take the panel apart, but it's going to take a while."

"I'd hate to have to pull this trigger, I really would."

I saw something flash out of the corner of my eye. I attributed it as being light glancing off the gun, but then I saw it again over in the shadows by the trees. Was there someone hiding in the woods? _There better fucking be!_

"Somehow I doubt that. I'll try rewiring it as quick as I can, but I could do without that in my face." I stared at the barrel of the gun until he got the message and lowered it, still keeping it trained on me.

I knew that if there was actually someone hiding in the woods, they were probably there to stop the bad guys, and I had a chance of making it out alive. If not, the second I failed to get this damn door to open would result in another hole in my body, this one fatal. I pried the panel off with my fingers, exposing the wiring. I disengaged the power supply first, so I wouldn't shock myself, and then started randomly pulling wires out and then reattaching them at liberty.

"Hey, could you hold these together for a second?" I asked my hostage-taker. He obliged, which I hadn't been expecting, and I made my move. I smashed one elbow into his face, and went for the gun with my other hand. I guess that was the signal someone had been waiting for. I heard the unmistakable sound of phaser fire, and shouts of alarm as several of my guys came out of the woods shooting. I had one hand clamped on this guy's wrist, trying to get the gun away from him, but he was much stronger than me. I managed to get the gun pointed upward where he couldn't shoot anyone before he pulled the trigger. The kickback made him drop it, but he rebounded and put me in a headlock. I retaliated by sinking my teeth into his arm.

He shouted something in what I assumed was Russian, and grabbed my leg before I could fight him off. His hand dug purposefully right into the bloody mess of my wound. The pain was even worse than when I initially got shot. I let out an enraged scream, another burst of adrenaline giving me the strength necessary to whip around, driving my fist up into his nose. There was a satisfying crunch just before he went rigid and fell to the ground. I was stoked that I'd taken down someone all by myself, but then I saw Spock standing a couple yards away with his phaser and remembered I was not quite _that _good at fighting.

The phaser fire stopped as soon as it had started, without any return fire from my captors. All of them lay indisposed on the ground while several Starfleet personnel and some of my crewmates went around collecting the guns from the unconscious men and then cuffing their hands behind their backs.

Everything that had just gone down hit me all at once, and I had to take deep, shuddering breaths to slow my heart rate down. I ran my hands through my hair nervously, looking around and trying to make sense of the situation.

"_Ensign!"_

Someone's hand clapped down on my shoulder, and I flinched.

"It's okay, it's me." Tremblay said, looking me over. "You're bleeding."

"I know."

"Sit down, you don't look too good."

She helped me to the ground, and I welcomed the feel of the soft, cool grass. I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering despite not being cold.

"Where are the others?" I asked.

"Should be here any moment. Your little distraction was enough for them to end the standoff. What the hell were you thinking, anyway?"

I smiled.

"I wasn't."

There was the sound of more vehicles driving up, and I tensed up. Then I remembered Tremblay had _just _told me that it was over- everything was okay. So why did I feel like it wasn't?

"They're here!" Lt. Kyle announced as he walked by.

"Good," Tremblay sighed. "Tell McCoy we've got a wounded car-jacker."

I laughed half-heartedly, focusing on breathing to relieve the pain. Sitting here and having to actually think about it was making it worse.

"You're getting off easy, he was really looking forward to chewing you out for that."

McCoy was over in a flash, med kit at the ready.

"You're lucky you're not dead."

I bit my tongue as he tore away the blood soaked bandage my captors had been so nice to put on- it was still bleeding profusely. I felt faint, but kept on biting down to make the feeling pass.

"There's no exit wound. Bullet's still in there, I'm going to have to operate as soon as we're back on the ship."

He turned to Tremblay.

"Was anyone able to get through to the Enterprise?"

"Not sure, Chekov was on to something but I lost track in the raid."

He put something in a hypospray, and jabbed it into my neck. In a matter of moments I was feeling a bit less pain, but not quite completely numb. Something was better than nothing.

"Bones!" Kirk called, jogging over. "How is she?"

"She's in shock- we need to get her up to the ship, now."

"Scotty's standing by for transport, you're free to go."

He ran off to do more captains' business, leaving me at the mercy of the CMO. McCoy and Tremblay helped me to my feet, and Tremblay made the call up to the ship. Moments later, we rematerialized in the transporter room- I don't think I'd ever been so happy to see it. I was whisked off to medical bay, and before I could even get my bearings I had another hypo in my neck. My eyes grew heavy, and I gave in to a well deserved, albeit drug induced, sleep.

* * *

A/N: Again, completely rewrote a lot... thanks for reading, everyone


	7. You're Gonna Go Far Kid

A loud chirping noise woke me up. _Damn birds._

_Oh, right. _When I didn't dream about dying or other lovely things, my dreams were filled with home. I sat up, casting my blanket aside, and sprung out of bed, then limped over to the com-panel on the wall, my leg still stiff and sore from being shot only a week ago. I'd been so out of it ever since, spending my days sleeping and occasionally leaving my quarters to eat.

"Danville here," I said, fighting back a yawn. I was glad whoever had paged me wasn't using the video talk feature- I knew I looked like hell.

"Ensign Danville, this is Commander Spock,"

My heart did a little flip-flop in my chest. Why was he contacting me? I hadn't spoken to him since… well, I didn't speak with him but he was down on the surface with us. He would have no reason to contact me unless I was in trouble. _Damn it, I'm getting court martialed!_

"Please report to the briefing room by the bridge at 0800."

"Yes, sir." Did my voice just squeak?

It was 0700. One hour to get ready… I really just wanted to sleep, but all I'd done since being discharged from sickbay was just that; I didn't need any more. I could barely bring myself to do anything, medical leave was surprisingly exhausting, but I was also itching to get back to duty. I took a quick shower, and angrily put on a uniform. I was not in the mood to deal with being reprimanded by superior officers- I'd avoided it so far, minus dealing with McCoy.

I'd only been on the bridge level a few times, just for infrequent repairs and diagnostics- I'd never seen the bridge or had any reason to, not that I wasn't curious. The conference room was right by the corridor that led to the glass doors of the bridge. Spock was standing on one side of the long table; McCoy sat on the other.

"Have a seat, Ensign." Spock motioned to the chair next to McCoy. I sat down, trying to look calm and collected- I was anything but.

The doors slid open once again, and Captain Kirk swaggered in. I don't even think he was aware that's how he entered a room, but he always did.

"I'll take it from here, Spock," Kirk announced, plopping nonchalantly into one of the rather comfortable conference chairs.

"Captain," Spock nodded in affirmation, and swept out into the corridor. I breathed a quiet sigh of relief, I would much rather be grilled by Kirk than Spock.

"Ensign Danville," He began, after Spock was out of sight. "Do you know why you're here?"

"I'm being court martialled?"

I could see McCoy hiding a smile out of the corner of my eye. Kirk was trying equally hard to keep a straight face.

"No, but if you really wanted to I could arrange that?"

"No thank you, sir."

"First off, I am supposed to reprimand you for going against Starfleet protocol, disobeying a direct order from a commanding officer, violating the prime directive, and reckless endangerment of yourself and crew," He read of the PADD in front of him. "Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"And are you aware that your actions could have resulted in your death or the death or injuries of others?"

"I am, sir."

"And given similar circumstances, would you do the same thing you did?"

"I-

I started to answer, and then didn't know what to say… was this a trick question?

"Maybe?"

"I would be disappointed if you didn't," Kirk said with a smile. "Your actions were dangerous, but if you had not done that then it could have ended much worse. As a thank you, I will not be putting any of your involvement in the official report to Admiral Pike- everything is off the record."

"And as for your injury, it happened in the final raid- accidental." McCoy added. "Also, I am clearing you for light duty. _Light." _He stressed.

"Thank you."

"Am I done here?" He asked Kirk, who nodded. "And, no away missions until _I _give the go ahead."

"Won't be an issue, Bones." Kirk called after McCoy as he went out the door.

Kirk was looking at something on his PADD while I sat in uncomfortable silence until he looked up again.

"I'm sending you to the Academy."

I nearly choked on the air I was breathing.

"_What?"_

"Ensign, you're an excellent engineer, and member of this crew. I think you have a lot more potential than you realize, and you haven't finished all of your qualifications for advancement."

"I didn't see the need in going to the Academy when I was on reserve. I thought OCS was good enough."

"Do you want to stay on as active duty?"

"I don't see why I shouldn't," I said. I liked the Enterprise, quite a bit. If I just went back to reserve status after my deployment was up, what would I even do with my life? Officer Candidate School two summers prior had been pretty tough, but I liked junior officer status more than being an enlistee. Why _not _go further?

"We are going in to space dock in a week. The current semester already started at the Academy, but Admiral Barnett said he could pull some strings to get you in the courses you need. I can have you on my bridge in two months."

"On the bridge?"

"Yes. So, are you in?"

"Yes, I'm in."

"Good!" He extended his hand, and I shook it. "Then, welcome to the crew of the Enterprise- officially."

A/N: Thanks for reading!


	8. Back to School

**Starfleet Academy: San Francisco, California**

Leaving the Enterprise was bittersweet, but I knew I'd be back before I knew it; we'd gotten into space dock 4 days after I returned to light duty. I had never been to San Francisco, let alone the West Coast. My own mother was always going to headquarters or most recently, teaching a course at the academy- but I never had the time to go. Being there for the first time was almost as exciting as an away mission, but this time I didn't have to worry about getting shot.

I stepped out of the shuttle hanger and into bright, hot sunlight. It was a shock to the system after spending so much time on a ship with artificial lights. By the time I made it across a perfectly groomed, impossibly green, lawn and to the Enrollment Services building, I felt like I was melting- I breathed a sigh of relief as I stepped into the climate-controlled building. It would take a while to adapt to this new environment.

Checking in was quick and painless, and soon I was walking to Nimitz Hall to see my room. I hadn't lived in a dorm since officer candidate school, and was not looking forward to the close quarters. I also had to look forward to meeting my roommate.

I rode the lift up to the third floor, trying to steady my breathing and calm my nerves; I was not a social butterfly, so the concept of meeting someone new that I had to share a room with was terrifying. I looked at the small piece of paper that the registrar had given me.

_Nimitz Hall 324, CDT A. Danville, CDT R. Decker_

I got off on the third floor, and found the wing marked #318-325. My heart was pounding as I walked to the end of the hall. I stood in front of room 324, and took several long slow breaths. Just as I was about to put my palm on the scanner, the door slid open.

"About time, roomie!" A girl wearing the standard red academy uniform stood there, her dark hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail. "Rachel Decker, nice to meet you!"

At least she was friendly.

I considered myself fortunate that Rachel was very much like me in personality, albeit a little more outgoing. Okay, way more outgoing, bordering on exuberant. Rachel kept the room at a comfortable level of clean, enough to be tidy but not too much to look like nobody lived there. I didn't have very many belongings, so unpacking took no time at all, and when everything was all put away I realized just how empty my side of the room looked; No pictures, nothing personal- just my clothes in the dresser, basic necessities and a few pairs of shoes.

"Are you sure you have enough stuff to survive?" Rachel asked.

"Yeah, should be fine. Didn't need much on the ship."

"I'm so jealous!" She groaned.

"What?"

"The Enterprise! You don't know how many guys here would sell their left nut to get that assignment."

"She's a great little ship," I laughed. "So… what are you in for?" I wanted to take the subject off me, out of sheer nosiness as to who Rachel was as a person.

"Xenozoology."

"Xeno- what?"

"Xenozoology… animals. Alien animals."

"That's… way more interesting than what I do."

"Not really," she laughed. "Not many people want to major in it, not enough action." She broke off as her communicator chirped. She scanned whatever text she'd gotten, and looked up at me. "You have any plans for the rest of the day?"

"No?"

"I've got a friend that wants company. I can give you a tour while we're at it if you want to join?"

As we walked across the campus grounds I felt completely out of place. I was used to wearing operational uniforms, and being separated by departments- there was no blue, gold and red here- only red cadet uniforms everywhere you looked. At least here we were all redshirts. We got to a small building signifying itself as the Starfleet Medical Research Center. I was just glad we weren't going into the hospital itself, I had no interest in being in one again anytime soon.

"Where are we going?" I asked as we got on a lift and Rachel hit the button for the fifth level.

"The lab."

What? I agreed to keep someone company, not hang out in a lab. We walked out of the elevator and into a hallway with glass walls on either side. I was starting to feel uneasy being in an academic environment; maybe I was making the wrong decision to be in the Academy. Only one of the labs had lights on, and that was the one we went into. A handsome, dark haired cadet stood at one of the lab stations, looking into a microscope.

"Decker, what took you so long?" The guy said, looking up from whatever he was doing, brushing a stray hair out of his face. British accent- I melted a little. "And who is this?"

"This is my new roommate- Allison Danville," She said, taking a seat on a lab stool. I walked over to the one next to her and sat down. "Allison, this is Alex Lawson."

"_Doctor _Alex Lawson," He stated, pulling out a packaged needle and tossing it in front of Rachel with a smirk. I stiffened involuntarily at the sight of it. "I need some of your blood. Thanks."

Rachel rolled her eyes, and took the needle out of its sterile packaging. "I don't know why I do things for you." She pricked the tip of her finger, and squeezed it so a droplet of blood appeared. "How do I know you're not cloning me?"

"Oh, I think there's enough of you in the universe, we don't need any more."

I couldn't help but let out a laugh at that one. He looked up, and we awkwardly met each other's glance. _Nice eyes. _

"You're such a dick," Rachel said. "Don't laugh at him, he doesn't need encouragement." She took a testing strip from Lawson and dabbed the a couple drops of blood on it before putting a piece of gauze against her finger to stop the bleeding.

"Hurt yourself?" He asked, nodding to me.

"Huh?" That one caught me off guard.

"You're limping."

"What the hell, Lawson?" Rachel snapped.

"It's a valid question. I _am_ a doctor." He smiled.

"Sorry," Rachel said, giving me a sheepish look.

"I got hurt on an away mission just over a week ago. Long story." I didn't even think I was still limping, and if I was it wasn't that noticeable... maybe just a little hitch in my stride. The pain was a dull ache now, the wound healed over.

Lawson raised an eyebrow.

"Please elaborate," he pried.

"If I told you, I'd have to kill you. You know how it is."

"Is that why you're here and not there on the Enterprise?" He asked.

"No, I'm here for some qualifiers. And how did you know I'm on the Enterprise?"

"Word travels fast. It seems strange that they dropped off at the academy fresh after an away mission gone south. Did something happen?"

"What?" Was this guy serious? I'd only _just _met him and now he was putting me on some kind of trial, psychoanalysis bullshit?

"You seem a little on edge."

I looked at Rachel, my mouth open, not knowing what to say.

"Lawson, do you really need to interrogate her?"

"I like to get to know the people I have to be around. If I'm being to forward, please, let me know."

"Could you just be nice for once and greet her like a normal person would? What is your problem?" Rachel all but shouted.

Lawson looked taken aback, but didn't lose his composure- just kept on working.

"Sorry. It's nice to meet you, miss Danville."

"If you really must know, I was shot while jacking a truck from some rogue ex- Starfleet criminals that had me and my crewmates hostage. I honestly don't care if you interrogate me, because it's nothing compared to having a loaded gun go off centimeters from your head, and being interrogated by a big Russian guy who could care less if you bled to death while trying to pretend to be more important than you really are. And I don't even care- because in space, shit like that happens all the time. So, if you want to know who I am- I'm a naïve little girl that's completely fucked up in the head and a damn good engineer. Nice to meet you."

Lawson stared right into my eyes, his dark eyes impassive. He cracked a smile, and turned to Rachel.

"I like her. Much more interesting than your last roommate."

Rachel and I went directly to the dining hall for dinner after my little meltdown at Lawson. I truly didn't know what to think of him, I'd never met someone as nosy as me, yet so forward about it. I felt intimidated.

"I'm really sorry, I should have warned you. He says what he wants, when he wants. He made me cry when I first met him."

"So how are you friends with him?"

"We were lab partners our first year here in Xenobiology. I was dating a Command cadet at the time; this real hotshot- thought he was the next James Kirk. Lawson completely grilled him at a party- he dropped out and broke up with me in the same day."

"What the hell?"

"I know, it sounds awful. But he was right. Robbie was a complete dick, and I didn't see it until Lawson pointed out how much he was holding me back."

"Are you sure he didn't just want him to leave you so he could swoop in?"

"No," She laughed. "That would have been weird, considering we're related. Cousins on my dad's side… I never met him until we came here, him being from London and me from Ohio. Funny how that happens."

"Hey, that would be completely acceptable in parts of Maine. Not the part I'm from, but you know…"

We got some food and sat down at one of the many empty tables. The only ones occupied held cadets studying- not something I was looking forward to.

"So what was he doing, anyway? With the blood samples?"

"No idea. He's in an alien pathology class or something... I don't follow that sort of thing."

"What's his specialty? Psychology?"

"No, mostly emergency medicine, but he's getting into the medical research side of things. The Sigmund Freud act is just his way of socializing."

"Makes him come off as a sociopath," I muttered. "Anyway. I'll try to give him another chance."

"Don't worry about it. He does grow on you. If there's anyone you can trust with anything, even your life, it's him."

"Good to know."


	9. Tonight We're Going Hard

The first week at the academy was so much like my first week on the Enterprise- going through the motions, meeting people, and being unable to get any decent sleep due to stress and classes. I finally got around to messaging my friends and family, after locating my personal communicator, which had been off for the whole time I was on the ship; I preferred to use my PADD, but it had been given back to me after the Sigma Alpha affair broken beyond repair- may it rest in peace. Of course, I didn't tell my family the full details of my adventures, if my mom knew how much danger I got myself into she would have me transferred in a heartbeat. I hadn't missed much while I'd been away, but I did miss my own 20th birthday 2 months prior- not such a big deal, but having it go unnoticed was a little sad.

My class schedule was pretty low key compared to others I'd talked to in my adventures with my roommate- I'd taken a lot of the classes I needed already. I was in Transporter Theory (probably going to fail), Hand to Hand Combat (definitely going to fail), Interspecies Protocol (boring as hell), and Survival Strategies (easy). The only classes I shared with Rachel were Hand-to-Hand Combat and Survival Strategies- probably the only ones that I could consider 'fun'. Starting up right at the end of the courses wasn't as hard as I'd expected, but I'd had some catching up to do. By Friday afternoon I already had two practical exams and had been told straight up by my Hand-to-Hand combat instructor that I needed to get in touch with my crazy side if I was going to do any good; I had an excuse for being lousy at defending myself, I wasn't even fully recovered from a serious injury- but getting in touch of my crazy side? I'd be happy to. Needless to say, Rachel and I spent the entire weekend studying and contemplating going to the fitness center to work out (we never did). The next week was no different, and the one after that- the assignments just kept coming.

I was sprawled across my bed with my mom's laptop she loaned me, trying to keep my eyes open while I researched transporter accidents (the images were disgusting). Rachel suddenly let out some sort of war cry and threw her PADD across the room. It ricocheted off the door and landed perfectly in our wastebasket. I started laughing, and knew that any thought of being productive for the rest of the night was lost.

"Seriously, if I have to write one more goddamn essay about unicorns on Nimbus III, I am going to kill someone!" She moaned, banging her head on her desk.

"Would you rather look at pictures of people who've been mangled by transporters? It's delicious." I suggested.

"No, I'd rather get drunk. We're going out!"

I shut my laptop and put it back on my desk, wondering if it would be cracked open again before the next week began; Probably not.

"Yeah, problem on that front- I'm not legal."

"It's San Francisco, my dear. I'll get you someone's ID."

Rachel made some calls, and managed to rack up a good sized group to hit the city; it seemed we weren't the only ones who needed to unwind. I didn't have anything appropriate for going out (and by appropriate, I definitely meant inappropriate), so I had to borrow a dress from Rachel; She was more blessed in the chest department than I was, so the dress wasn't a perfect fit but it would do it's job. As we left our dorm, me walking awkwardly in 3-inch high heels that were also hers, I definitely felt out of my element. Rachel was confident, pretty, had a great personality- I was more reserved and felt like her shadow. It was obvious who would be getting all the guys' attention tonight- not that it mattered; I wouldn't know what to do with a man if I got one.

We got on the metro, and rode into the heart of the city. I was fascinated by everything the whole drive in as I'd yet to go anywhere in San Francisco that wasn't on campus. I caught Rachel staring at me with a funny smile on her face, and she laughed.

"Never been to a big city before?"

"No, I have. Boston counts, right?"

"I think San Fran is a _little _wilder than Boston."

We got off on a random street corner, and started walking. I was tripping in the heels as I followed her, and just prayed that I wouldn't fall and embarrass myself. Luckily, we didn't walk far before we got to a noisy side street where there was a huge line. A big neon sign proclaimed the club as "Presidio", and it was loud- this could get a little crazy. Now there was the issue of getting in.

Rachel scanned the line for a few moments, craning her neck over all the people. I didn't know who she had managed to wrangle in to meet us, so I was just scanning for any familiar faces.

"There's Jaylie and Nick- come on!" She grabbed my wrist and we hurried over to our fellow cadets who were near the front of the line. Rachel, the social butterfly of our roommate-ship, chatted them up right away while I stood by and listened in on the conversation and tried to ignore the people behind us that were bitching about us cutting in line. As the line moved up closer to the bouncer, I started breaking out in a cold sweat- what if they knew right off my ID was not mine? A girl in our dorm leant it to me, one Sasha Long; fortunately, we looked alike. Hopefully the fact that she was 3 inches taller than me and had green eyes wouldn't go noticed in the dim lighting…

It worked. The bouncer barely glanced at the ID before handing it right back to me. He lifted the velvet rope, and the four of us went in sporting flashy new neon pink wristbands. I was momentarily overwhelmed as we crossed the threshold into party land, and had to take several deep breaths to get my heart rate back to normal. Nick elected himself to go get our first drinksWhile we waited for him to come back with the drinks we found more of our Starfleet group sitting around in a large booth. I recognized most of them, though not by name. Hopefully if we all got drunk enough, names wouldn't matter.

I was half way through my drink when Rachel was whisked away by a Cadet Hayes that she'd been going after for some time. Some girls had it so easy. I talked to Jaylie, or more like I made sounds of agreement as she went on and on about her achievements, which I could barely even hear over the music anyway. Some new arrivals came over and joined our group in the booth.

"Hey, Garrett!" Jaylie interrupted herself to greet one of the newcomers, a flashy blond guy who I had never seen before. It took me a minute to realize Lawson was right behind him- I didn't recognize him not in uniform. Lucky for me, Rachel chose that moment to reappear and grab me to go dance. I grabbed my drink, and let her steal me away.

I don't why people choose to dance, let alone walk, in heels; it was not working out for me. Fortunately, the club was so crowded that 'dancing' consisted of standing in a clump and everyone moving their upper bodies- that was something I _could_ do. It didn't take me long to down the rest of my drink, and I definitely needed more to numb the pain in my legs and feet. Just as I was about to go attempt to find the bar through the throng of people, some guy who had been hanging out in our cluster sidled over to me.

"Need another drink?" He asked. I didn't know the guy, but I wasn't one to say no to free alcohol.

"Yeah, I was just going to go get one."

"I'll get it for you. What do you want?"

"Surprise me?"

"Of course," He smiled. "Don't go anywhere!"

He went off through the crowd with my empty glass, and I turned to Rachel for help- I didn't know what to do now that I'd attracted someone!

"He's cute!" She all but yelled, but due to the volume of the music that was really the only way to communicate. I gave a half assed smile- I really didn't see anything I liked, but I was getting a drink out of him so that was something. The guy came back a few moments later with something that _definitely _had vodka in it. I'd just have to suck it up and ignore the awful taste- it all did the same thing either way.

"I'm Jackson, by the way." He said, taking a swig of his beer. Coors light… someone wasn't trying to get drunk, apparently.

"Ally," I said, sipping the drink he'd bought me- it tasted like pure alcohol with a little bit of juice. It would do.

I didn't have anything to talk about, and I really didn't want to dance. Rachel and Hayes needed new drinks, so our group migrated to the bar. Jackson went off somewhere else, and I felt some relief that I didn't have to make any more small talk. My eyes kept trailing back through the crowd towards our booth. Lawson sat against the back wall, drinking a beer and talking to the Garrett guy and Jaylie. I made eye contact, and quickly looked away, pretending I hadn't been staring.

I downed my drink and ordered a Sex on the Beach. I was feeling pretty tipsy already, so we were definitely making progress. Rachel and Hayes were starting to get a little touchy feely, and I felt like the awkward third wheel. I started to head for the booth to give them some space, and to sit for a minute while I got my spinning head under control, when I felt an arm wrap around my waist.

"What are you drinking?"

It was Jackson.

"Sex on the Beach," I slurred. I sounded drunker than I thought I was.

"If you wanted sex on the beach you could have just asked," He smiled.

I laughed, hoping he wasn't serious. I don't think pickup lines got much creepier than that.

"You want to get out of here?" he asked me; standing so close his breath blew on my neck. All I wanted to do was sit down, and not with him- but I couldn't be rude, either.

"No, I'm here with my roommate." I looked back to see her in a lip-lock with Hayes… yeah, she wouldn't even notice if I disappeared.

"Oh, where do you go to school?"

"Starfleet. I'm an officer, I'm just here on business." I sounded so much more professional when I said it that way, I felt. Not that I wanted to impress him.

"Starfleet, huh? What do you do?"

"Engineer."

"Sounds sexy."

"If you're into that sort of thing."

I stumbled, and he quickly grabbed and steadied me. I really needed to sit down.

"Easy there. Come on, dance with me!"

Dancing was _not _going to happen. I was starting to overheat, I felt like I was going to pass out- I needed air.

"I'm going to the ladies room, I'll be right back."

He looked a little put off, but I couldn't handle his obvious advances, and I was too drunk to deal with it. I fought my way through the crowd, and stumbled out the front door past security. I expected the cooler outside air to be more refreshing, but my body still felt uncomfortably hot. My legs were shaking and being on stilettos wasn't helping, so I leaned up against the wall and slipped them off. A group of girls came out as I stood there, and walked off down the street laughing- they sounded muffled and far away. I had to close my eyes for a moment as another wave of vertigo struck me. A vibrating in my chest startled me to attention. My communicator.

_11:48 PM_ **Rachel:** Where r u?

I fumbled with the touch screen, trying to type out a reply. My brain and body were not working on the same wavelength.

_11:49 PM_ **Me:** Oiutside

I felt like an idiot as I stood out there alone, too drunk to text.

_11:49 PM_ **Rachel:** U ok?

I didn't want her to worry, so I went to go back inside. Unfortunately, the bouncer had a different idea when he saw me nearly fall down.

"You're not coming back in, time to go home."

"What?"

"You're too drunk."

"But my friends are in there!"

"You can call them or we can call you a cab, but I'm not letting you back in."

I glared at the bouncer, but realized it wasn't going to help. I turned and started walking, while trying to call Rachel. I was rounding the corner by the time she picked up, and kept going- walking was somehow better than standing still at the moment.

"He-eyy girl," I answered.

"Where are you?"

"I've been banished."

"What?"

"Bastards won't let me back in!"

"Why not? You only had- what, three drinks?"

"That's what I said! Hold on-"

I could hear a vehicle approaching, and my hair stood on end. I half expected to see a jeep coming after me, but it was just a police cruiser… which was just as bad.

"Oh shit, cops!"

One thing that would _not _look good on a Starfleet record would be getting caught intoxicated and without proper identification. I started walking fast around to the next block, meaning to circle back to the bar. Once I was out of sight of the cruiser, I started running. Or at least I thought it was running, the ground was lurching all over the place and I could barely keep on my feet.

I heard footsteps behind me, and picked up my pace. Bad idea; I went sprawling face first onto the sidewalk, my communicator flying out of my hand. I lay there for a second waiting for my vision to steady before getting to my feet. Someone was at my side, helping me up.

"Are you alright? What are you running from?"

"Police!" I panted, looking to my rescuer. Jackson- luck was not with me.

"You shouldn't be wandering around alone."

"Did you follow me?" I demanded.

Jackson put his hands up in surrender position.

"Whoa, don't get so defensive. I'm a nice guy."

"Sure you are. Is that why I can't tell my ass from my elbow right now? Did you put 'nice guy' juice in my drink?"

"I think you're a little drunk, sweetheart. That's all. Come on, let's get you something to clear your head."

"I'm sure you just want me to clear _your _head- no thank you." I turned to grab my communicator, laughing at the horrible joke I'd just made. I fell again as I was reaching down, and couldn't get up right away. I felt arms on me again, and lashed out- no more playing dumb and friendly, this guy was going down.

At least, I thought I was going to fight him off. Someone else got to it first. He was pulled off of me, and the new guy decked him. Several people came running, probably to watch the fight that was ensuing.

"Ally, are you okay?"

Rachel knelt down next to me. I was trying to put the case back on my communicator where it had fallen off when I dropped it.

"I'm fan_tastic."_

I used the sign post behind me to stand up, and stood there swaying.

Jackson ran by, blood pouring out of his nose and lips. I put two and two together when Lawson walked over, flexing his scraped up and bloody hand.

He grabbed my face, and I thought he was going in for a kiss.

"Your pupils are huge," He said. Chills went down my spine as he moved his hand to my neck, taking my pulse. I'm pretty sure just that action made my heart start racing. "I think he may have slipped you something."

"I came to that conclusion," I said. "Thanks for kicking his ass for me, that was sweet of you."

"You should have said something, not gone off alone!" Rachel demanded. "He could have done a lot worse if we didn't find you!"

"Sorry, you were busy making out with Hayes- I didn't want to interrupt." I caught Hayes's eyes and saw him flush. Rachel blushed. I changed the subject. "Is anyone else hot? I'm dying. I'd take my clothes off but that's probably not social-ly-_ably _'ceptable?"

Lawson's friend, Garrett, was laughing behind his hand. At least someone was on my level.

"We should get back to campus." Lawson said to Rachel. "I'll check her out once we're back at your dorm." He turned back to me. "How are you feeling?"

"Pretty good, actually." My whole body was numb and I was dizzy, but other than that…

"Really, because you look like you're going to fall over," Rachel said, taking her heels and my communicator out of my hands. "Are we getting a cab?"

I stumbled along with the group, still able to walk but occasionally needing their help to focus on not ending up in the road. Garrett claimed a cab, and I slid in with Rachel. Lawson chatted with Garrett and Hayes for a moment before getting in on the other side of me. It was a short ride across the bay back to the Academy, and we got out at the courtyard between the dorms. Lawson took care of the fare while Rachel and I started making our way to Nimitz Hall. We didn't get far before I ended up puking in a flowerbed, which judging by all the dead flowers had that happen often from drunken cadets.

"I'm sorry," I whined, trying to catch my breath. I had _never _in all my years of illegal drinking ever thrown up from alcohol- that's how I knew for sure this was not normal.

"Not your fault." Rachel said.

"I'm so thirsty!"

"We'll get you some water when we get back to the dorm, okay?"

"No," I was making my acquaintance with the flowerbed again. Rachel held my hair back.

"Lawson, is she going to be okay?" She called.

Lawson jogged to catch up to us as the cab pulled away.

"I think she'll be fine. Let's get her inside before we draw attention, campus security's not going to be fun to deal with."

He put an arm around my waist, and I went along with them. We got past the front desk, the cadet keeping watch just nodded and didn't make Lawson check in- we were home free! I was vaguely aware of much going on around me from that point on, and just following through the motions while my brain went to blackout mode. Rachel helped me get into more comfortable clothes, Lawson took some of my blood, and I worshipped the porcelain god. The last thing I truly comprehended was laying on the bathroom tiles, muttering something about 'absorbing the cold'… it made perfect sense in my drug addled mind.

* * *

I woke up in my own bed, thankfully. When I picked my head up off the pillow, with great difficulty, I saw that Rachel was sitting at her desk and working on something. It definitely wasn't the same night, then. My memory of the night out was hazy, _scary _hazy.

"What did I do?" I groaned.

"Why, do you feel like you did something crazy?" She mocked. "Do you remember anything?"

"_mmph."_

"You were pretty messed up… took your clothes off and started running down the quad- we had to chase after you until you gave up."

"WHAT?" I sat bolt upright, the sudden jolting to my head making me nauseous. "Why would you let me do that?"

Rachel was never very good at keeping a straight face, and she barely stayed that way for a few seconds before she was howling with laughter.

"Sorry, I couldn't resist," She wiped away a stray tear. "Nothing happened. You got lucky."

"I did?"

"No, not like that. Actually we all may have accidentally gotten to second base, but I won't get into that… How are you feeling?"

"Like I'm going to track that guy down and kill him. Did Lawson really kick his ass or am I making that up?"

"No, he definitely did. It was great. Speaking of Lawson, he wanted to hear from you."

I flinched as she tossed her phone at me, and still ended up getting hit in the face anyway.

"You were supposed to catch that!"

I rubbed my stinging nose and glared at her as I waited for Lawson to pick up the comm.

"How is she?" He answered, thinking it was Rachel.

"Hey, babe," I said. "Was last night as good for you as it was for me?"

"Danville?"

"Guilty."

"I assume you're feeling better?"

"I don't remember a goddamn thing."

"Doesn't surprise me. There were traces of GHB in your blood."

"Well that explains this bloody band aid," I had just torn it off and tossed it in the trash. The vein underneath was a little bruised and puffed up. "I'm a little concerned that you stole some of my blood. What's GHB?"

"You know it as roofies. Causes giddiness, confusion, blackouts and as in your case, amnesia."

"So… there are no lasting effects, right?"

"No. You really don't remember _anything?_"

"Last thing I remember is falling asleep on the bathroom floor. You would tell me if I did anything embarrassing, right?"

"Of course. You didn't. If you had, I probably would have gotten it on video."

"Good answer. Thanks for having my back, Lawson."

"Any time. Make sure you eat something, drink plenty of water, okay?"

"Yes, doctor!" I disconnected, and tossed the phone back to Rachel, who caught it swiftly in one hand.

"I'm never drinking again," I told her, forcing myself out of bed to go get cleaned up and back to the studying I'd neglected in order to get drunk.

"Keep telling yourself that, dear!"

We didn't go out again after that lovely night, and I was kind of relieved- I loved a good party, but my past couple times drinking didn't end up so fun in the end. The courses were taking over our lives, and we seemed to have a test every day. I was doing all right in everything, surprisingly, but everyone seemed to make things a competition and I didn't know if I was up to par with them. Fortunately, most of the showoffs were those who were in the command track and they all thought they were going to be captain- I wasn't standing in their way so they didn't really bother me.

Finals and qualifiers sprung up on us quickly. The most terrifying of all was the bridge qualifier; we had done many a bridge simulation, which weren't bad, but it was all in preparation for the big test, the Kobayashi Maru. Everyone who had ever taken it said it was horrible and unbeatable, except for one time. James T. Kirk himself was the only one who had ever beaten it, but only by cheating. I didn't have to worry about beating it, as I would never be tested as a potential captain, but I did have to perform the other duties and deal with whoever was center seat. When people are under pressure, they sometimes get nasty- and I knew the Kobayashi Maru would be a little overdramatic. It came as a huge surprise one day as I was leaving the ridiculous live-fire exercise we had been doing in Survival Strategies, when one of the command guys came up and asked me to be in his testing team.

"You were on the Enterprise, right?" The guy asked, running up to Rachel and I as we walked towards the dorm. I think his name was Benson or Jensen… something like that.

"Yeah," I said, suspicious of his intent. "Why?"

"Well, you have experience. And I need one more person to take the test. I'm taking it early." He was grinning like an idiot, and I realized he was trying to impress me.

"Wow, you're brave," I tried not to sound sarcastic, but it came out anyway. Judging by the fact that he was still smiling, he didn't notice my tone. "When is it?"

"Tomorrow, 1600."

I didn't have any classes after 1400, so I didn't really have an excuse to say no. I wasn't sure I was ready, but it's not like I could learn anything else there was to know. Plus I just really wanted to get him to stop following us, he was creeping me out.

"Fine. I'll be there."

"Great, thanks Danvers!" He ran off to join his friends.

"Danville!" I called as he left. Why do guys have so much trouble with names?

"Think he's trying to use you to make connections?" Rachel asked.

"Oh, probably. I've got them… doesn't mean I'll use them."

When I got to the testing room the next day I was feeling a mix of terror and excitement. I didn't know any of the test crew personally, but I recognized them all from my different classes. We got suited up in the ugly jumpsuits, and went in to take our assigned stations. I had the engineering station, of course. Jensen (fortunately one of the instructors said his name on the way in, so I didn't have the awkward job of asking him) was sitting in the center seat looking smug. I had a feeling this would be _very _entertaining.

I didn't know what they were testing me on exactly, as the primary focus would be on Jensen, so I just focused on what was going on at my station and listened to any orders or instructions. All I really had to do was monitor the power levels and do whatever I was asked to do. I barely had to say anything, just typical "yes sirs" and such. And then things got entertaining. We started getting attacked by Klingon warbirds. Jensen got completely thrown off guard when things started going south, and was struggling to make decisions. I had to ignore what he was saying and judge for myself what to do with the shields and power. He was convinced that we needed to send all power to the weapons to fire on the Klingons, but the girl at the weapons station kept repeating that their shields were up and it was no good. Finally, I had to speak up.

"If we divert power to weapons it's going to take our shields down, we only have enough for one or the other. _And_ we are about to lose life support."

"Take shields down to fifty percent and fire torpedoes on the enemy ships!" He ordered.

"Yes, captain," I said, rolling my eyes and taking down the shields half way. He wasn't doing so well, not that the test was winnable anyway.

We lost shields first as they started firing, and then life support went. Fortunately the only special effects the test did was a bit of smoke and sparks from the ceiling and consoles- I wouldn't want to experience life support failure, even if it was fake.

"Evacuate ship!"

Game over. He lost both the USS Kobayashi Maru and the USS Trainer, which was our 'ship'. We exited the simulation, and were met outside by one of the instructors. Our results would be sent to us later, so we were told to just go- simple as that. I walked to the dining hall to go get dinner, and witnessed Jensen fuming to one of his friends. He was definitely not ready to be a captain, and probably never would be- but who was I to judge? All I cared was that I was going back to my beautiful Enterprise and the best captain in Starfleet.

When I next saw Jensen, a week later at our next Survival Skills class, he was considerably less talkative and not trying so hard to show off. I caught his eye and he turned away, all but sulking. I don't know if he realized that no-win scenario meant _no-win_- but he probably learned his lesson from whatever performance review he had gotten. I myself did fine, not stellar, but I had received my bridge qualification so that was all that mattered to me.

We were doing another live fire exercise, however this time the phasers would be on the lowest stun setting- we usually just got extremely low powered shocks which felt like static, this would be the real deal. I had been shot with a bullet, but never a phaser on stun- I assumed it didn't hurt quite as much, but I was still scared to death. The instructors went through the mission details, which I barely listened to, as I was too busy listening to Rachel bitch about her latest argument with her boyfriend, Ben Hayes. The first rule of Starfleet Academy: pay attention.

"If you get shot, you are done, and will be escorted off the field by one of us. Any questions?"

"Hold up," I motioned for Rachel to shut up; I hadn't heard any of the directions up to this point. Everyone was moving around, and it looked as if we were getting ready to run. "Did you hear any of that?"

"Yeah, weren't you listening?" Rachel had the strange, but useful talent of being able to carry on a conversation while listening to another- I did not.

"I was listening to you!"

"Get to the flag, don't get shot."

"Same as last time?"

"Pretty much."

It would be easy then- the last time we had the live fire exercise, all we had to do was navigate through the training course and reach the flag which was the safe zone. I don't know what it was supposed to train us for, exactly, but they seemed to enjoy seeing us fleeing for our lives. We were given the go signal, a shrill whistle from one of the instructors. All 23 of us took off like a herd of cattle. I stayed by Rachel, as she still wanted to talk.

"So he was all 'I never see you, we never get to talk'," She did an excellent impression of Ben's thick New Jersey accent which so often annoyed me.

A phaser shot hit one of the huge rock formations we were going around, right above her head. I instinctively ducked down, expecting more. One of the bigger guys in our group went down in front of us, and I nearly ran over him; He wasn't unconscious, but he looked a bit dazed.

"Like, seriously? Does he not realize I'm trying to get a somewhat decent assignment, here? He's so needy." Rachel continued.

"Tell him he's being a little bitch, and break up with him," I panted, changing direction as I noticed we had better odds if we stuck around more people. "Seriously, don't waste your time."

"Watch it!" A female voice barked, and I ran into the speaker's outstretched arm. "It's pressure strips!"

"What?" I looked down to where the Deltan girl, whose name I didn't know, was looking. Sure enough, there was a small square of wire mesh in the dirt that I would not have been able to see while running.

"It's not the instructors firing!" She announced as if she'd discovered something exciting. "Put any weight on those, it sets off the phasers- they're wall mounted!"

She pointed about 10 yards away to one of the rock walls. There was a small metallic object that looked a bit like a security camera.

"How did you know that?" Rachel exclaimed.

"I'm security, I notice these things. Good luck!" She said, darting off.

"Thanks!" we called after her, and proceeded at a slightly slower pace. As we skipped along, leaping over the little pressure pads (which were fairly easy to find now that we knew they existed), we passed several more casualties sitting around and looking pissed. Soon we saw the flag, 100 yards away give or take. Nobody had reached it yet, but there were four people getting close.

"This is so easy!" I exclaimed, gracefully avoiding another guy who had gone down.

And then I was face first in the dirt. I got a phaser shot to the ass- I was done. Rachel looked back, and got one in the shoulder- she dropped to the dirt next to me.

"Mother _fucker!" _She shouted. "That hurt!"

"Man up, Decker!" I spat out the clump of dirt that had invaded my mouth. "That was nothing."

"We lost!" She stated, and we watched the remaining three scrambling the last few yards for the flag.

"Indeed we did."

One of the instructors got to us, and led us out of the course to join the other losers. My backside was numb but slowly regaining feeling- I hated to imagine getting hit with a higher setting. We watched as Jensen reached the flag first, followed by our Deltan helper.

"I guess that makes up for the Kobayashi Maru," I muttered to Rachel. Jensen was celebrating boisterously as ever, back to normal.

We went back to the dorm as soon as we were dismissed, and I spent a good several minutes cleaning dirt out of my teeth and obsessively rinsing with mouthwash followed by a long, hot shower. When I got out, Rachel was getting ready to head out.

"Where you going?" I asked, flopping down on my bed.

"Going to dump Ben. How do I look?"

"Like you're going on a date."

"Well I need to look good, it adds to the effect."

I shook my head.

"Anyway… I'll be back soon. Wish me luck!"

"Be nice!" I called after her as she went out the door.

I opened up my laptop, meaning to do some studying, but ended up emailing my friends back home instead. None of them ever answered my phone calls, as we were in different time zones and they had busy lives as well, so email it was. Just as I got done sending a note to my best friend Jill, who seemed to be ignoring me the past few weeks since finding a new boyfriend, my phone went off. I picked it up, expecting it to be one of them calling me back, but it wasn't anyone I was expecting.

"Danville here." I answered.

"It's Lawson."

"What's up?"

"Are you busy tonight?"

What? Was I going to be asked on a date? I felt myself blushing, and was glad nobody was there to witness it.

"No, not really."

"Good. Meet me at the bridge at 1900, bring Rachel."

"For what? Which bridge?"

"The big red one. You will see when you get there. Oh, and no uniforms."

I had more questions, but he hung up. I figured it definitely wasn't a date if he wanted me to bring my roommate along, and I was a little relieved but disappointed at the same time. I closed my laptop, knowing I wouldn't be able to do anything productive. I sent a quick text to Rachel, and then proceeded to get ready.


	10. Crazy, Beautiful Life

I almost didn't recognize Lawson when we got to the Golden Gate Bridge, as he had the hood of his jacket pulled up, looking like someone you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley.

"Are we doing what I think we're doing?" Rachel asked as we walked out to the pedestrian walkway. "That thing you told me about…"

"Yes," Lawson said. "I'm not joining in, I just want to watch."

"Watch what?" I asked, obviously the only one who had no clue what we were doing here.

"You will see." He said in a sing-song voice I'd never expected to hear from him. I rolled my eyes.

"By the way, it's more orange than red."

"I'm a guy, do you think I know the difference?"

"I don't know- I would hope a doctor would at _least _have a kindergarteners grasp of colors."

As we got to the halfway point of the bridge, I realized that a section of the overhead lighting was out. When we got closer, I could see a whole group of people gathered around in the shadows on the walkway. At first I thought there was some base or bungee jumping going on, but then I could make out someone climbing up the suspension cable to the middle tower. Whoever it was had already made it half way and was quickly reaching the top, with the group below was cheering him on.

"Lawson!" Someone called. A blond guy pushed through the crowd to get to us. I recognized him, but I couldn't remember from where.

"Who's up there now?" Lawson asked the guy.

"Some Andorian guy… first year," He seemed to just notice Rachel and I. "Hey, Danville, looking good."

"Huh?" How did he know me if I didn't know him?

"She doesn't remember anything," Lawson interjected.

"Really? I'm Ryan Garrett, this idiot's roommate."

Garrett! That was the guy that came into the club with Lawson; I did remember the girl I was talking to saying his name. But I don't remember having any kind of interaction with him and honestly didn't want to know what I may have said or done. I hated all these lapses in my memory; I was too young to be senile.

"Nice to meet you, for real this time. I hope I didn't make a bad impression."

"Not at all. That was a good night," He laughed. "I think Lawson put that guy in the hospital."

"That's my job, isn't it?" He said dryly.

"So who's going next?" Rachel asked. The Andorian guy was getting so close to finishing and the crowd was whooping and hollering.

"I'm next in line, but if one of you ladies wants to give it a try, go right ahead!"

We both politely declined. I was so over trying to prove myself, I did that shit on the Enterprise and it just led to getting hurt; in this case it could lead to splattering on pavement below or in San Francisco bay- not to mention there was a steady stream of traffic going by.

"What's the point of this exactly?" I asked Lawson. I leaned against the guardrail so I could get a better vantage point of the action above.

"Tradition," He said, moving next to me. Rachel went to my other side, and swung a leg over the rail so she was perched up on it. "If you get to the top, you get bragging rights. If you don't, you're either dead or embarrassed."

"Have you done it?"

"Me? Hell no. I'm not that stupid." He pulled down his hood, letting the wind ruffle his hair.

There was a celebratory holler from up above. The Andorian had reached the tower, and was pumping his fist in the air. He disappeared around the corner, where I assumed there was an access ladder or something. It was Garrett's turn now, and he was making a show of it. He started up at a good pace, and only slowed down when the spacing between footholds got further apart. If it had been me up there, I would have been frozen in place or shaking- he looked completely relaxed. He had gotten just over half way up when our formerly dimly lit area was overcome with flashing blue lights. Three police cars landed at the curb. Chaos ensued.

We jumped away from the guardrail, and moved back towards the group. One of the cops shone a spotlight up at Garrett, who froze up. An amplified voice came from the cruiser, ordering him to turn around and come down.

"NO!" He shouted back. "I'm not coming down until I'm done!"

Our little posse cheered, not seeming to care however many laws we were breaking. I didn't know whether we should stick around and watch or get the hell out of there. The decision was made for me.

"We should go," Lawson said. "Come on!"

He grabbed my hand, which I had not been expecting. I didn't have time to think about how much I liked it, as he started running and I had to keep up with him. Rachel was already ahead of us, and Lawson didn't let go of my hand until we reached her. I had my fill of running for the day due to the training exercise, and was exhausted, but the thrill of being busted by the police and the desire to _not _be arrested gave me the burst of energy I needed to go at a breakneck speed. I heard other people running behind me, and turned to make sure it wasn't the cops chasing us; It was only two guys and a girl from our group- the rest were still standing around cheering Garrett on. We didn't stop running until we got to the end of the walkway, which was about a mile from where we were, more or less. I bent over with my hands on my knees, completely out of breath. Lawson was laughing, which was strange considering his roommate was probably going to be arrested as soon as he finished the climb, granted he didn't fall.

"What's so funny?" I asked, coughing.

"We're on the wrong side!"

I looked around, and realized that we were in fact on the complete opposite bank of the bay. Campus was 1.7 miles in the other direction. I did not want to have to walk all the way back, and even if we did we ran the risk of being arrested. The three others that had followed us were too busy laughing to care that we had all made such a dumb mistake.

"Goddammit!" I wined.

"We can't go back that way." Rachel panted.

"No, unless you want to get arrested," Lawson agreed. "Metro stop is right up this way, come on."

Our merry band of six made its way up the street to the nearest bus stop, and nearly missed it as it was already there and shutting its doors. Fortunately they didn't drive off, and we were let on. Rachel, Lawson and I sat together and watched out the window as we went back over the bridge. The police were still parked out by where we were, and judging by the spotlight, Garrett had reached the tower.

"I assume you'll be getting a call later?" Rachel asked Lawson.

"Definitely."

* * *

We heard from Lawson the next day that Garrett hadn't been brought to jail, but he and everyone who stayed behind had been issued warnings and the event had been reported to Starfleet administration. Sure enough, come Monday we were all forced to attend an assembly where we were told that unsanctioned training activities by cadets were not allowed- not that it would stop anyone. If Garrett wasn't popular before, he was now; standing up to San Francisco's finest gained him some serious street cred.

As graduation approached, we ran out of time to do stupid, immature shit. I spent all of my free hours trying to cram for my Transporter Theory and Inter-species Protocol exams and slept when I could. The survival course and combat training were getting more and more difficult and it didn't help that all of us were suffering from sleep deprivation.

My family kept in touch, but every time I talked to them I felt homesick so I avoided it as much as possible. My step brother, Jesse, had graduated from med school when I'd been away, and was planning on doing a residency at some hospital in New York City- I begged him to join Starfleet but he had absolutely no interest. Tyler, my stepdad, was doing well for business since spring was in full swing; when the snow went away, people took their cars out to play. My own car was doing well, and Tyler took it out every now and then for a drive so she didn't just sit there and rust. I hated the fact that I would be leaving everything behind for who knows how long, but the Enterprise had more to offer me than anything on earth ever could. That's what kept me from packing my bags and going back home to Maine.

I didn't hear much from my mom for a while, but my stepdad kept assuring me that everything was fine and she was just busy. They had a strange relationship, as my mom was always traveling for her job within Starfleet Intelligence (which she refused to ever tell me _anything _about due to strict secrecy regulations) but they never grew tired of each other. I guess it's true when people say that distance makes the heart grow fonder. When I finally did hear from her, it was in person. She had a conference at headquarters, and used her free time to hang out with me. She wanted to talk about my academy life, but I really didn't have much to tell. I couldn't exactly tell her about going out clubbing with my fake ID, getting roofied, going to illegal cadet functions… as far as my mom was concerned, I lived a very boring and safe life- I wondered if she ever suspected differently.

We didn't have much time to spend together, but we tried to make the most of it. I got treated to a meal outside of campus for once, which was a welcome break- our diets were strictly managed. Being able to enjoy a delicious burger and fries at a restaurant was a dream come true. After eating, she forced me to get my hair done at some fancy salon; not that I was complaining, but she made it seem like I looked hideous when I didn't think I looked all that bad. I returned to my dorm after a drawn out and overly emotional goodbye with a few shopping bags full of new clothes and my hair back to my natural brown- it was a welcome change, I'd severely neglected my appearance while in space.

Soon, the big day had arrived. The entire student body was gathered in the assembly hall, and all of us who were actually graduating were seated in the lower level of the auditorium. I was told there were a total of 272 of us graduating this time around, which was less than my graduating class when I was in high school- hopefully the ceremony wouldn't be long and drawn out, because I was anxious for it to be over. Rachel sat next to me looking extremely nervous- unlike me she didn't know her assignment, along with plenty of others. I hoped that she would be on the Enterprise, as I didn't want to leave her behind, but I wasn't the one who called the shots.

Admiral Barnett said a few words (you couldn't really call it a speech) before one of the other administrators started reading off names and assignments. Luckily, Rachel and I were closer to the beginning of the alphabet so we didn't have to wait long- and the line was going quickly.

"Danville, Allison- USS Enterprise." I took my diploma and saluted the Admiral, then moved along down the line.

"Decker, Rachel- USS Lexington. Delaney, Michael- USS Hoover…"

_Lexington? What the hell? _I turned around as we walked back to our seats, and gave Rachel a sad face. She was smiling, so I guess she was happy about the assignment, but I really wanted her on my ship. We sat down and watched the rest of our class receive their assignments.

"So… Lexington." I said, trying to sound casual and mask my disappointment.

"It's okay," She said. No, it wasn't- when I first met her she was all over the Enterprise. It wasn't fair. "I'll keep in touch!"

"You better," I said.

"Garrett, Ryan- USS Lexington."

Well, she had him for company too. I noticed her smiling, and assumed she was moving on from Hayes.

"Larabee, Angela- Starbase 7. Lawson, Alexander- USS Enterprise."

I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. This was going to be fun.


	11. Starships Were Meant to Fly

There were seven of us on the shuttle to the Enterprise; the only other person I knew was Lawson, and only four of us were human. I thought I had a decent level of alien species recognition, but the only one I could recognize was a Deltan… I would have to work on that.

"Someone's been in hiding," Lawson said, sitting next to me on the shuttle.

"I didn't realize you were looking for me."

"I didn't say I was."

I wanted to make a snappy comeback, but the shuttle pilot came over the intercom and made the takeoff announcement. I was hoping it would have been someone I knew flying the shuttle, but the voice was unrecognized. I would be seeing my old friends soon enough, but I was getting impatient. The takeoff was turbulent and rather uncomfortable, but we broke through the atmosphere in mere minutes and the ride smoothed out.

"What's your assignment?" I asked, and then realized it was probably obvious.

"Science department and medical... Not by choice."

"Why? McCoy's a good guy to work with." That was a blatant lie, I couldn't imagine working under him. He wasn't a bad guy, just cranky. Scotty wasn't always laid back and nice, but at least when he snapped at anyone it was for doing something really stupid.

"I worked with him when he was still at the academy- we got along fine, I'm just… tired of the medical field."

"So you went to school for how many years, and you don't even like what you do?"

"What, you like being an engineer?"

"Well, yeah… life's too short to waste doing something you hate."

He merely shrugged. We really were polar opposites.

"My god, that is _brilliant,_" Lawson muttered, looking past me out the window. I hadn't been paying attention, but I knew exactly what he was talking about- I remembered my first time seeing her. Being on board I never got to appreciate just how beautiful the Enterprise is.

"See why I like being an engineer?"

I could see him rolling his eyes through the reflection in the window, and I smiled to myself. A few minutes later we landed in the shuttle bay. I had been so in control of my excitement and nerves and whatever else I was feeling up until now- as soon as I set foot the shuttle bay my heart started jumping around in my chest. All I wanted to do was go back to doing my thing, and showing off for Lawson.

Yeoman Rand checked us all in, and assigned quarters- mine being the same as before, thankfully. I got to my door, scanned my palm, and the door hissed open- home at last! It looked just as I'd left it, which was empty and lifeless- all I'd left of myself was uniforms in the closet. I got unpacked, and re-synced my laptop with the ship's computer- a lengthy process.

I opened up my schedule, scared and excited to see where I would be stationed- Kirk said he wanted me on the bridge, and I hoped I would be. It was not so- I was working the graveyard shift in engineering pretty much every day- clearly this was Lt. Spires' sick idea of a welcome back present. My bad mood was immediately uplifted when the door chimed. I opened it without a thought.

There were a lot of high pitched, over-excited noises coming out of Tremblay and I as she grabbed me in a choking hug, and I don't know if we were even speaking English or some strange alien dialect. I found it funny that I was getting such an affectionate greeting; she was usually very professional and reserved (and I guess I was, too). It felt good to be missed, and to know that I had people on this ship that actually cared about me.

"You didn't say goodbye!" She accused, letting go of me so I was able to get some air. "How was it?"

"Horrible! So much bullshit, I'm so glad I'm back."

"Sorry," she said with a laugh. "Want to go grab lunch? I just got off my shift."

We went down to the mess, and grabbed some sandwiches. There was very little else that was good to eat on the Enterprise- food was about the only thing on the ship I didn't miss in my time away.

"So, you make any new friends?"

"Yeah," I said. I hadn't really had much time to make that many friends, now that I thought of it. "My roommate, mostly- I was pretty busy."

"That's what happens when you cram an entire semester into two months! Proud of you, kid!"

"Thank you, ma'am," We clinked our water glasses together in a toast.

When 1600 came the next day, I was pretty much jumping out of my boots with excitement. When I got off the lift and walked into main engineering, I had to restrain myself not to run through the place dancing. I went to find my supervisor, Lt. Spires, so I could get my assignment. We had only left space dock about eight hours ago, as the captain had been in a meeting down on Earth-according to what Tremblay told me.

"Danville!" Lt. Spires looked surprised to see me, as I approached him standing by the warp core monitors. "Didn't think you would come back."

"I'd miss the ship too much."

"And not me? I see how it is."

I was surprised by how easily I was able to transition back into working. I would have thought I'd forgotten how to do my duties, but it was like I hadn't been away for six months at all. I was working with a different crew, as I'd been under close observation of more experienced people when I'd first been assigned to the Enterprise- I was working more independently now, and it felt good. By the time midnight came around, we had everything in perfect order- starships are fickle machines, you can't just set something and leave it, as energy levels are always changing. I went off to bed as soon as I got off my shift, happy to be back in my old routine. I liked it when there was no excitement, but then again… I didn't join Starfleet to live a boring life. I had to enjoy peace while I had it.


	12. Sabotage

Three nights in a row working the same, long and boring shift in engineering took its toll, and when I finally reached my day off I planned on spending most of the day sleeping. My plans, however, were ruined when my door chime went off and woke me up. I glanced at the time on my alarm clock- 0500, much too early considering I'd only been in bed since 0200. Someone was going to get punched in the face. I looked at the video screen with bleary eyes, and when I saw who it was I didn't know whether to be pissed or flattered.

"What do you want?" I ordered when the door swished open.

"Did I wake you up?" Lawson had an amused look on his face. He was wearing his uniform, and had to admit the blue was stunning with his eyes… but at this early in the morning I could not deal with anyone, no matter how good they looked.

"No, I was just partying by myself at two a.m." I snapped.

"Well, you're awake now."

"Just tell me what you want." I yawned.

And that's how I ended up in the medical staff lounge, of all places, assisting Lawson with proofreading some report which he didn't have time to do apparently, as he was on shift in medical bay. I had no idea what any of the information I was looking at was; it was all about neurological pathogens or some shit- not my field of expertise.

"You know- I'm an engineer, not a doctor!" I called after him as he left me all alone with his PADD and my laptop. At least he was sweet enough to get me a coffee.

Lawson's note taking was atrocious- it was slow work picking through his trains of thought and making sentences out of them. The scientific terminology may as well have been in Klingon, because I didn't understand any of it. All I could think of was the fact that I could be sleeping, but instead I had been manipulated into doing someone else's work for them… was I really that easy? After about half an hour of painstakingly translating Lawson-to-normal English, my head getting closer and closer to the table as I went on, I started to doze off. A loud bang startled me back to full wakefulness, heart racing.

"Danville, what are you doing here?" McCoy laughed.

"Are you _trying _to give me a heart attack?"

"Sorry." He definitely was not.

"Apparently I'm Lawson's personal yeoman."

"And you're letting him get away with it? Let me see that," He walked over to me, hand stretched out. I handed him Lawson's PADD. He scrolled through it, probably losing my place in the document as he did so. "This is for Spock."

"Is it?"

He had a strange look on his face as he sat in the chair next to me and motioned for the laptop. With very little apprehension, I slid it over. I watched as he started quickly translating Lawson's notes (apparently doctors have their own language only they can easily understand) and typing them out- much faster than I had been. And then I realized he was adding his own words to the document. I watched in amused horror as he interspersed jibes about Spock being a "green-blooded hobgoblin" among other less than appropriate things. When he was satisfied with his handicraft, he handed it back off to me and got up.

"I can't let him send this," I laughed as I read over what he had written.

"Don't worry about it," He said, going for the door. "If he's too lazy to check his own report, he's getting what he deserves."

This was a new side I was seeing to McCoy, and I kind of liked it. I felt like I should take out his crafty edits, but then I remembered that I was here doing this instead of sleeping. Danville/McCoy: 1 Lawson: 0.

Lawson came back for me about 20 minutes later, after I had finished up the rest of the report and transferred the file over to his PADD. I closed up my laptop, ready to go.

"You're done?"

"Yes. I don't know why you couldn't have done that on your own."

"I just had to re-attatch one of your engineer friend's fingers, I was busy."

"Why do you just assume I'm friends with every engineer? Who was it?"

"Doctor-patient confidentiality…"

"Whatever. I'm going back to bed and enjoying my day off- that is, _unless_ you have some other super important tasks for me to do?"

"I'll make it up to you!"

"How? Do you have an engineering degree that I'm unaware of?"

"Dinner tomorrow night?"

"If dinner is at midnight, otherwise I'm working. That doesn't make up for this anyway, you need to try harder."

"Well you're hard to please, aren't you?"

"Seriously?" I raised an eyebrow, giving him a chance to redeem himself.

"What?" He really was clueless sometimes. _"_Why are you being difficult?"

"I'm leaving now."

"Ally-"

"Save it."

I stormed out the door, but then regained some composure, as I walked through the medical bay- no need to be dramatic. When I got on the turbo lift I realized I was shaking. I don't even know why I snapped at Lawson, now that I thought about it; probably just suppressed rage. I wondered if this is what my former roommate Rachel had gone through before I had come along- if Lawson just used her and took her for granted. I know they were friends, but I had never really gotten the sense that he ever treated us like a normal friend would. That night on the Golden Gate Bridge was the closest he had ever been to friendly, but even that was short lived. I just had to face the fact that he was a typical guy- intelligent, a good doctor seemingly, but dumb as a rock.

I got off the turbo lift and headed towards my quarters. I was momentarily startled as Kirk's door hissed open. I had yet to run into him since I'd been back on board, and I suddenly felt very awkward seeing him while I probably looked like a sleep deprived mess.

"Good morning, Danville!" He greeted me with his usual flashy grin.

"Good morning, sir," I said, passing by him to my door. "And goodnight!"

"Have fun with that. See you around." He threw me a casual salute, which I returned.

I jumped right into my bed, not even bothering to change out of the uniform I'd thrown on after mercilessly being taken away from my room. I was determined to sleep, and if anyone else decided to change that plan- heads would roll.

It took me a while to get back into the swing of working odd hours and random days, but once the first week back was over I was feeling right at home. I spent most of my time off hanging out with Tremblay and whomever we happened to bump into. The Enterprise hadn't come across any trouble as of yet, and I was enjoying the stress free existence- of course, knowing our luck, we were bound to run into something.

Finally, after two and a half weeks of being back on board, I got the one thing I was waiting for. It wasn't a call to be on an away party- that was to be avoided at all costs, judging by my last experience. I was getting ready to go down to main engineering as usual when I received a com from Lt. Spires to report to the bridge. I struggled to maintain composure as I took the turbo-lift to the bridge, and tried to look as casual as possible. I had to catch my breath when I saw the bridge through the glass doors. It was more or less what I expected- I'd done bridge simulators so I knew the standard Starfleet layouts, but none of those fake bridges held a candle to the beauty of ours. All the control panels were white and sparkling, and it was so _bright_.

My heart was pounding as the door whooshed closed behind me. Lt. Spires looked up from the engineering station nearest the door, and nodded to the empty seat next to him. I glanced around quickly as I walked over, noticing how few people were on the bridge; of course it _was _midnight, so none of the senior officers were on duty that I knew of. If there had been, I would have had to ask for permission to come on board the bridge. I sat down in the ridiculously comfy chair, and resisted the urge to spin around in it; I always had to work on my feet down in engineering, the bridge was the place to be!

"Ever been up here before?"

"First time," I said, trying not to look too excited (I probably looked terrified).

"Well, it's the same as the simulators, just newer and a hell of a lot prettier." He explained. "Basically, you do whatever I, or whoever is supervising, say- you won't be working alone so don't worry if you get confused. Good so far?"

"Yes, sir."

I knew how to monitor power levels and all the other tasks I was supposed to do on the bridge; The bridge simulations had done a good job of preparing me, but the Enterprise was so new that everything was different. The first few hours I spent orienting myself to the layout of the controls and listening to instructions from Lt. Spires. It was very quiet on the bridge, except for people talking amongst themselves and people coming and going. Spock came onto the bridge around 0400, and I watched him go over to the science station out of the corner of my eye. All I could think of was Lawson- I was dying to know if the document had been sent in its raunchily-edited state and how Spock had reacted; I would probably have to ask Lawson himself, but I was scared to face him and I was rather enjoying blatantly ignoring him.

"Lt. Desalle, set a course for Deneva," Spock ordered, breaking the quiet lull that had come over the bridge. "Lt. Spires, notify engineering to prepare for shift to warp four."

"Yes, sir." Spires got on the com to engineering.

"Engineering- Lt. Greene here."

"It's Spires. We're going to warp four."

"On it."

Spires turned to me after disconnecting the com.

"I think I'm good here, can you go help out down there?"

"Sure," I said, getting up to leave. I didn't want to leave the bridge, I'd only been there about four hours and we were finally going somewhere. But, I was a pro at warp prep having done it countless times- they probably needed me more down there than up here doing nothing.

"Good job, Danville. I'll try to get you in here again soon."

And so I left my first ever bridge shift, grinning stupidly as I walked to the turbo lift. I was feeling good as I got down to main engineering and went about my normal tasks- the new responsibility was a huge boost for my self-confidence. We got the core clear for warp four within twenty minutes, and then we were on our way to Deneva. I had heard of Deneva, it was an Earth Colony, but I'd never been. I didn't know what we were going there _for, _but I was happy we were going _somewhere._

* * *

I got called down to the transporter room early the next day (early for me being late afternoon, really). I thought I had made it clear that I had absolutely no interest in going on an away mission ever again, but apparently nobody got the memo. When I saw Kirk, Spock and McCoy there I knew that it was not going to be an easy day, in fact I'd be lucky to get out alive.

"Danville, you're with me," Lt. Spires announced, presenting me with a utility belt- I cringed when I saw a phaser in the holster. "It's precautionary."

"I can't make any promises that I won't accidentally shoot you," I said, fasting the belt over my shirt. The phaser against one hip and a communicator on the other did make me feel a little safer, however.

There were four security officers standing around- I assumed they were just precautionary as well, I really didn't know what kind of situation we were going into. At least we were armed and prepared unlike my last away mission. Kirk, Spock, McCoy and two of the security officers were already standing by the transporter pad, while the rest of us stood behind the safety line. Kirk nodded in our direction, and Spires returned it.

"So what's the mission?" I asked, feeling very left in the dark. Clearly I had missed the debriefing, if there had been one.

"They're going down first to check what the situation is with the lack of communication. We'll be going down once we get confirmation that it's safe. We are supposed to find the problem with the communications system, if there is one."

"_If_ it's safe? That sounds promising."

The first team got into position on the transporter pad, and Chekov took to the control panel.

"I am beaming you down to the center of the capital city," Chekov said, his c's turning into z's- I tried hard not to laugh. He added something in Russian that I obviously could not understand.

"Thank you, Mr. Chekov," Kirk said. "Energize."

And with a swirl of light and a whirring sound, the transporter pad was empty. We waited and waited, and heard nothing. I was beginning to think that maybe they didn't need us- but wouldn't they have confirmed it? I gave Spires a questioning look, and he shrugged. Finally, after fifteen, maybe twenty minutes of waiting in bored silence, a communication came through.

"Enterprise- two to beam up!"

Two? Why just two, when five of them went down? Did they not need us after all? Or was something wrong? Chekov locked onto the signal, and seconds later two figures materialized on the pad. It was one of the security officers, holding an unconscious woman in his arms.

"Edwards, what happened?" Spires asked, eyeing the strange woman. I was staring as well, she was covered in scratches and her hair looked like she hadn't brushed it in weeks. Something was definitely wrong down on the surface, and I honestly didn't want to get involved.

"Everyone down there is crazy, that's what happened," he snapped, carrying the woman past us, en route to sickbay. "There may be more coming up, I'll send a medical team to stand-by."

"Chekov, can you get through to the captain?" Spires asked, taking control of the situation, as the highest-ranking officer in the room.

Chekov tried every communication channel possible, but all we got in feedback was static. He looked concernedly at Spires.

"What's going on?"

I jumped at the unmistakable sound of Lawson's voice at my shoulder. He was the last person I wanted to see at the moment, I'd been doing a fantastic job at avoiding him and wanted to keep it that way. I reluctantly turned to him and saw that he had two med-techs and two nurses along with him.

"I don't know," I said, trying not to sound snippy but probably failing. "We can't get through to the away team."

Spires turned to the security officers and me.

"We're going down. Either they're in trouble or having technical difficulties. Either way they need our help."

The two security officers got on the pad first, taking the usual back position, and I got on one of the front panels.

"Doctor Lawson, you too. You may be needed." Spires added.

I wanted to protest him coming with us, but as soon as he and Spires were on the pad with us, Chekov was already finalizing the transporter coordinates. I closed my eyes as soon as I saw his hand go to the buffer, and didn't open them until I felt warmth on my face. Sunshine was always a good thing.

"Phasers on stun," Spires ordered. There was absolutely nobody around. We were in a city in broad daylight and there were no humans in sight- that was _not _normal.

"So, where are the crazies?" I asked, pulling out my phaser and locating the settings switch.

I was ignored while Spires attempted to use his communicator. It still only gave back static. I started circling, copying what the security officers were doing. Lawson was staring at me, and I soon realized he was looking at the phaser with apprehension.

"Am I making you nervous?" I asked, smirking.

"A little bit, yes. Mostly I'm concerned that I don't _have_ one."

I smiled knowingly. I'd been there, done that, and had the scars to prove it. Fortunately, this away mission didn't seem too bad- the weather was beautiful, the city actually seemed worth spending some time in, and it was quiet… except for the steadily approaching noise of running footsteps.

"We've got company," Petty Officer Guerra said. She had her phaser at the ready, and I followed her line of sight towards a nearby side street. Moments later, a group of ten or so people came running out, headed straight for us. Judging by the random pieces of furniture, kitchen knives and large rocks they were holding, they weren't exactly coming to welcome us to their city.

"Intruders! _Intruders! _Intruders!" All of them were yelling.

Guerra shot the guy brandishing the knife down, who collapsed on the pavement- he was the one I'd been most worried about meeting. The rest kept running towards us while we held our phasers at aim. I had a moment of panic- I had never shot anyone with a phaser; I'd only ever shot in a range. These were not fake outlines of people; these were legitimate living, breathing, and wildly charging people. I held my breath, and pulled the trigger. Some other guy went down, dropping what looked like a table leg. Before we could shoot all of them down, the ones still conscious were on top of us. Petty Officer Hewitt took a metal baseball bat to his shoulder, which more pissed him off than seemed to hurt him, as he mercilessly stunned the guy who hit him.

I shot another guy, but then I was knocked off my feet and backwards to the ground. I looked up into the snarling face of a woman who looked to be in her late 40s; she was clawing at me with her nails, and they were _sharp._

"Intruder! INTRUDER!"

"A little help here?" I yelled, freeing one of my arms enough to clamp onto her face and push. She seemed unaffected by my own nails digging into her. I tried so hard to push her off but she had a good twenty pounds on me.

Finally someone stunned her and pulled her off, and I clambered to my feet breathing hard. Lawson was holding my phaser that had been knocked out of my hand, and looked as smug as ever.

"You owe me one," He said, handing me my phaser back.

"I seem to remember being the one who was owed."

I laughed, and walked away to survey the damage.

"Everyone okay?" Spires asked. His lip was bleeding, but he looked fine otherwise. Everyone else was unscathed. Our welcoming party, however, were unconscious courtesy of all of us. "We need to proceed with caution. The other away party could be anywhere and may be in trouble. Keep your communicators out and keep trying to reach them, that's all we can do."

And so we spent the next half hour or so wandering around aimlessly, with no way of reaching the other team to know where they were. Finally, when we were getting tired of searching, a signal came through on Guerra's communicator.

There was some crackling, and then a voice. We all sighed in relief.

"Lt. Zahra here. Where are you?"

Guerra looked at Spires, unsure what to say.

"Corner of Long Road and Bridge Street," I told Guerra, reading the street signs that I had noticed. How original and creative. Guerra grinned and passed the message along.

After more static, Zahra responded.

"We'll be right there. We need to beam up immediately, Commander Spock needs medical attention."

We didn't wait long before the five of them came out of a nearby building. _Five? _Edwards had beamed back on board, so there should only have been four left. There was some guy with them, and he looked wild and unkempt like the other citizens, but he wasn't acting like a raving lunatic- who the hell was he? We ran to them, and Lawson went immediately to assist Doctor McCoy with Spock. I was taken aback when I saw that there was some strange, pink jelly-like creature over Spock's head. I couldn't help but stare.

"You shouldn't have come down here." Kirk said, not looking like his usual cheerful self.

"Sorry, sir," Spires said. "We didn't hear anything after Edwards came up, and expected the worst."

"Thank you for your concern, Lt. Spires."

We beamed up in two groups again, first being Spock, McCoy, Lawson, Zahra and Guerra. As we waited for further communication for us to get in position, I took a better look at the scruffy newcomer. His hair was shoulder length, golden brown, and he had about two weeks worth of beard growth. He was ripped, handsome, and definitely not someone I would choose to mess with. Most startling of all were his eyes- bright, beautiful blue. I kept looking between him and Kirk, noticing how uncomfortable they were acting… and it became obvious. Seeing Kirk's not-so-happy expression, I didn't ask any questions, but I knew they _had_ to be related.

When we got back to the transporter room, there was no sign of the medical team or Spock, but the security officers were waiting for us. Kirk sent his older look-alike off with the full security detail, and left in a hurry with orders that nobody else would be allowed to beam down to the surface. I followed Spires, waiting for him to give me something to do- I was too pumped up on adrenaline to sit around. That held the record of being the shortest away mission I'd ever been on, but then again I'd only been on two others. I was more than happy to have escaped unscathed, save a few scratches from the crazy-bitch. Spires and I went to main engineering, where we were immediately confronted by Scotty.

"How did it go?"

"Couldn't find the source of interference," Spires said. "We were attacked by the locals."

"Oh, that's just wonderful. And the situation has gotten worse," Said Scotty, scratching his temple. "We have no impulse drive. There's some kind of force field shutting it down. I assume going back down there is not an option?"

"Captain says nobody beams down. Too dangerous."

"Then we'll have to find a way to disable it from here," He looked a little lost but eager to have something to do. Scotty loved working under pressure- I couldn't say I shared that sentiment. "Go get yourselves cleaned up and meet me back here in about an hour, I could use all the help I can get."


	13. Like a Satellite

I went to my quarters, showered and put on a clean uniform shirt. I then spent several minutes admiring how badass I looked while posing in the mirror with my borrowed phaser; I was supposed to have turned it back over to security, but forgot in all the commotion… might as well enjoy it while I had it.

I headed back down to engineering, pondering when my next meal would be. I was starving- I should have gone to get something to eat, but time was not a luxury. As I turned down the corridor, I heard the unmistakable sound of the transporter buffering. Nobody was supposed to be transporting down, I had clearly heard the captain's instruction. I hurried my pace a little, meaning to take a peek at who was in there for peace of mind- maybe the order had changed, but I had to be sure. My sixth sense was right; Ensign Ku, one of the transporter techs, was lying on the ground, not moving, a hypo spray discarded on the ground next to him.

"Oh, _shit!" _I shouted, running over to the console. I found the comm button I was looking for and hit it. "Security, man down in the transporter room!"

I checked the buffer log and saw that it had just been used to beam one person down on a delayed signal- whoever had used it knew what they were doing, seeing as they acted alone. It took mere seconds for two security personnel to come running in, phasers drawn. One of them was Lt. Zahra, the other Yeoman Rand. Rand crouched down and checked on Ensign Ku, and Zahra joined me at the console.

"Someone beamed down, I just found him like that."

"Did you see who it was?" She asked, tapping away at one of the console screens.

"No, sorry."

"We'll know in a second," a video feed popped up on the console, and she backtracked it. Ku was standing at the console, looking bored, when a figure came out behind him and quickly hypoed him in the neck.

"That's that guy who came back with us!" I exclaimed.

"Yeah," Zahra said. "Kirk's brother."

"Brother?" I gaped at her. "There's _another_ Kirk?"

Kirk, _our _Kirk came running in just then, lowering his phaser when he saw that we had the situation under control.

"What happened?"

"The security cameras show Ensign Ku being ambushed from behind," Rand explained, trying to wake Ku up. "He was knocked out with a hypospray. It was your brother, sir- he programed the controls to beam himself down to the surface!"

Kirk headed straight for the transporter pad.

"Send me to those coordinates." He said to Zahra, completely ignoring the fact that _I _was an engineer and fully capable of operating the transporter. "_Now."_

"Alone, sir?" She asked.

"I won't let my brother risk anyone else's life. _Energize!"_

I excused myself once I knew Zahra and Rand didn't need me anymore, and hurried to main engineering.

"Where have you been?" Lt. Spires questioned, intercepting me as soon as I walked in the bay.

"Transporter room- Kirk's _brother _just beamed himself down to the surface, and Kirk went after him."

"_Brother? _You've got to be kidding me."

At that moment, Scotty came bounding out of his office, looking very excited and being followed by equally enthusiastic Chekov and Keenser.

"UV rays!" Scotty exclaimed as he approached us. I was used to his excited outbursts whenever he made breakthroughs with things, but I don't think he realized just how random this one was.

"We're not getting a tanning salon on board, are we?" My response garnered a quiet laugh from Chekov. At least someone found me amusing at times, I really wasn't.

"Mr. Spock found that the creatures can be subdued by UV rays- given exposure, the little spines they shoot into the nervous system, dissolve."

I tried to follow, but I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. I'd seen one of the creatures, but I didn't know there was more than one. I also didn't know what he meant by 'spines'- were they like stingrays? Maybe they were some mutant offspring of stingrays and jellyfish?

"So," Scotty continued. "We need to target the city and somehow flood it with UV rays. Any ideas?"

"UV torpedoes?" I suggested. "Do those exist?"

I saw Spires out of the corner of my eye, shaking his head. Yeah, my suggestion was pretty stupid- at least I tried. Scotty laughed.

"If we want to bomb the city to the ground, yes, that would work. Also, we don't have torpedoes. Next?"

"What about forming a satellite array?" Chekov spoke up. "Instead of broadcasting a signal frequency we could-"

"Broadcast the UV rays- brilliant, Mr. Chekov!" Scotty jumped up excitedly. "Let's go figure something out, shall we?"

If there was one thing that could be said about Chekov, he was an overachiever. We all went to the tactical storage and launch bay, and sure enough there were several compact satellites lined up against a far wall. I was given the task of locating high power UV bulbs. I didn't think we would have very many, since there was really no use for them, but a quick look in the computer storage records showed that we did have some. I located the correct storage bay, and with Keenser's help found several large crates full of UV bulbs. It is amazing how much seemingly useless junk is on a federation starship, but somehow the most meaningless things can suddenly become the most important thing in the world. Keenser was surprisingly strong for an alien of such small size, and together we managed to load four of the crates, weighing about seventy pounds apiece, onto a cart and brought them out to where Scotty, Chekov and Spires were examining one of the small satellites.

"It doesn't give off much light," Scotty said, having hooked up one of the bulbs in the satellite's lens. Sure enough, there was only a tiny radius of purple glow emanating from it. So much for being high powered. "We need something to magnify it."

"Could try magnesite," Spires mentioned. "Make a filter."

"That should work," Chekov said. "Do we have any?"

"Have to check with the science department," Scotty said.

I expected that they would send me, as I seemed to be the designated fetcher-of-things, but Spires volunteered and took Keenser along. I received the fun task of attaching the UV bulbs to the satellites. There was some chatter coming through the communication panel, which Scotty had opened a channel for so we could be in touch with sickbay in case Spock had more findings.

"_Four to beam directly to sickbay!"_ Captain Kirk's voice came through, muffled by static. Scotty ran over to the panel and pressed the talk button.

"Captain, this is Mr. Scott. The interference from the planet has increased. I cannae guarantee we can safely beam you back! The good news is that Mr. Spock has come up with a solution to the little bastards! Mr. Chekov and I have rigged a satellite array to flood the city with ultraviolet waves- the trick is shooting them through a transmagnesite filter that-"

"_Just beam us out."_

"Aye, sir!"

As soon as I _didn't _hear my name mentioned in that conversation, I stopped what I was doing to glare at Scotty. I was working just as hard as Chekov, why did he get credit and not me? Spires was helping also, why couldn't he, I don't know, mention us to the captain so we could have a little recognition. Scotty turned back, and we made eye contact.

"I didn't have time to say all our names," He said, knowing _exactly _what my expression meant. Scotty was one of the few men that could read people's faces and know exactly what they wanted to say and wouldn't- some other people on the ship were clueless. "You'll be in the report, I promise!"

Scotty ran down the corridor to the transporter room. Spires and Keenser came back just as I finished putting in the last UV bulb, and I assisted with installing the transmagnesite filters. The whole process took about an hour, and then we handed it over to Chekov and a tactical team for the launch. I had been working well past what I was originally scheduled, so I was relieved when Scotty let me off.

All I could think about was food, so I took the turbo lift straight to the mess hall. I was dying for a meal, so I didn't even see the person waiting for me in the corridor as I passed by.

"Ignoring me still, Allison?"

I whipped around, and saw Lawson standing against the wall, casually, his arms crossed.

"I'm on a mission."

"For what?"

"Food. Want to join?"

"I don't know, could be dangerous," He said, walking with me. "Seeing as you still have a phaser."

I looked down, and sure enough it was still attached at my hip.

"Dammit! I need to return it!"

"You can do that later," He said. "Besides, it looks badass."

* * *

I went over the report the next day before heading in to Engineering for my shift. Sure enough, Scotty had put my name in where the credit was due- I loved recognition, especially when it helped redeem my reputation. The satellites had been a success, and transmissions had come through from the surface soon after they were turned on confirming that the citizens were being freed from the effects of the creatures. They had had some sort of collective power that made everyone slaves to them, basically. The creatures were not dying, but they were all becoming incapacitated. We had samples of them brought on board (put in very secure storage) and were heading for the nearest starbase to deliver them.

I never got the chance to meet Kirk's extended family, as they beamed back down to the planet soon after our satellites were a success. Lawson, my eyes and ears in Sickbay, confirmed that Kirk's brother George was married and had a nine-year-old nephew, Peter, and they had been treated on the ship for the effects of the jellyfish things.

Tremblay and I were working together for the first time in days, so we were playing catch-up while we got back to doing normal ship operation duties. She had been stationed on the bridge where not much had been going on while I was once again on exciting adventures… not that my day had been very exciting compared to others, but it _had _been busy. Or maybe I was just becoming immune to crazy things happening and just didn't realize how much I actually did in a day? This ship was definitely getting to my head.

"So how are things with that Dr. Lawson guy? Did you kiss and make up?"

"What? No… we're good." I tried to sound cool, but I think I just came across as defensive. Lawson and I didn't have a thing, we were just friends… if you could call it friendship. Acquaintances?

"He's pretty cute."

"Yeah, so are half the men on this ship."

"He clearly likes you."

"If liking me involves being a complete asshole to me, than yeah, I totally see it."

"He probably finds you intimidating?"

"Probably, I am pretty badass. His words, not mine."

"Yeah," She said. "You're one mean bitch. But think about it, you've already been a member of this crew and know the ship. He's brand new. That was his _first _landing party- how many have you been on? Five?"

"Three."

"Close enough. You're intimidating- accept it."

She had a point- the Enterprise was my territory before it became his. I was already a part of the gang, and he was new blood. I'd already proven myself to be a dedicated and valuable (for the most part) member of the crew by busting my ass and risking my life on a couple (okay, one) occasion- Lawson had yet to face any true danger or crazy away missions. He probably felt pretty cool for shooting someone down with a phaser, but those had been normal people under the influence of mass psychosis from the jellyfish hybrid things. I would love to see him in the face of real danger- would he stay cool or lose it? I, myself, tended to lose it.

"You know, he hasn't even mentioned what I did to him… well, what McCoy did."

"I don't think he knows. But I _did_ hear McCoy bitching about having to send unnecessary inventory reports to the science department… I think Spock knew it wasn't Lawson."

I laughed- of course Spock would know it was actually McCoy, who the hell else called him a green-blooded hobgoblin? So if Lawson didn't know that we had sabotaged his report, then he only thought I was ignoring him because of my blow up at him. Realizing this, I felt like a complete bitch. Would I apologize? Hell no.


	14. Shock and Awe

When you're an engineer, there is no such thing as "off time"; On a starship, there is always room for something to go wrong, and when it does- who gets to fix it? I was sleeping when I first got the feeling that something was not right; I don't know if it was the cold or the muffled voices in the corridor which woke me up first, but my body alerted me that I needed to get up. I wanted to burrow under my covers and go back to sleep, but now that I was awake I knew that it wasn't going to happen. And to top it all off, my room was freezing. I got up, shivering, and raided my closet to find something warm to wear.

I pushed the button to open the door. Nothing happened. My brain was still slightly sleep-fuzzy, so I just stared at the door panel for a moment before realizing that there was no power going to it. The only lights in my room were the emergency lights that only came on in absence of power- if I had been more awake I would have realized this sooner. I switched into engineer-action mode, and bent down to find the emergency release at the bottom of the door; it took a little bit to find it and figure out how to use it, but when I heard a click I knew I had it right. I managed to slide it open enough to put my fingers in the crack and slide the door open. I walked out into the dimly lit corridor, and jumped when I saw two figures appear out of seemingly nowhere. It was Kirk and Lt. Barnes from security, one of our only neighbors from down the hall.

"What's going on?" I asked, trying to catch my breath. I was always jumpy in the dark, even though it was an irrational thing to be afraid of.

"Not sure," Kirk said. "The lights were flickering about an hour ago and then just went out completely. And now the environmental settings are going haywire. Good job getting your door open, by the way."

"_Engineer,"_ I shrugged.

We made our way down the corridor, the only light being provided to us by the tiny emergency lights along the floor and ceiling. I made sure to walk slightly behind Kirk and in front of Barnes- there was no reason to believe anything or anyone would jump out at us, as we were on our own ship, but I was pretty on edge nonetheless. Kirk stopped at an environmental control board which was half way between our corridor and the next one, which was all storage bays- there were no lights on there, either, as for the rest of the ship… we couldn't tell. Kirk removed the control board cover, exposing the internal wiring. If the absence of power was a ship-wide thing, we couldn't do anything about it, however if it was just our deck then one of us could mess around with the wiring and probably get it up and running.

Lt. Barnes and I stood by quietly as Kirk went to work, unclamping some wires and rearranging them, using his hands to forcibly break some in half to reconnect them elsewhere. I knew what he was doing, but I didn't want to step in- he could have his moment. I was too busy being impressed by the fact that our captain also had some engineering and electrical knowledge probably beyond what was required by Starfleet, I almost didn't notice that he made a stupid mistake until it had already gone too far.

"No, don't do that!" I yelped, reaching my hand out to grab his. For a moment I stared at my hand, wondering why I wasn't moving when I was clearly trying to pull his hand back, and then I realized that all the muscles in my arms and across my chest had clenched up, and I had no control over it. I had Kirk's wrist in a death grip. It felt like every nerve in my body was suddenly at high alert, and my muscles were rigid. It didn't stop until a huge spark flared up, and Kirk let go of the wire he had been holding on to. I felt immense relief as my muscles contracted, and I let go of Kirk's arm.

It had all happened so fast that I wasn't really certain what exactly _had _happened until I put two and two together. I was tingling all over, and could smell something burning- we had been shocked. It wasn't the first time I had received a shock from doing something similar, but it was one of the most intense electrical shocks I had ever received- and even small ones were miserable.

"_Shit!" _Kirk hissed, cradling his hand. The skin was blistered and peeling. I checked my own stinging hand, and saw similar burns on the back- the smell was coming from us. I gagged a little.

"Sorry- I should have warned you," I said.

I caught Lt. Barnes snickering in my peripheral vision

"I would make a 'how many idiots' joke… but I won't." Barnes said.

"Lights are back on, at least," Kirk laughed, and closed the access panel. "I'm going to the bridge to see what's going on. Danville, get to medical."

"Shouldn't you?" I retorted. He was worse off than I was.

"_Captain,_" He said, clearly mocking me.

Barnes went back to his quarters, leaving Kirk and I to ride the turbo lift together. I was paranoid that it would lose power any second, stranding the two of us all alone in a dark lift. Not that he was all that bad of a person to be stranded with, but if I had to be stranded somewhere, the turbo-lift would be the last place I'd pick. I didn't know if I was relieved or disappointed when the lift stopped at medical and Kirk booted me out.

"What did you do?" Nurse Chapel asked, looking up from some hypo sprays she was sorting. It was pretty bad that coming here was more or less becoming a routine- I spent way more time in medical bay than I wanted to. My self-preservation skills were clearly not very developed, because I could _not_ keep myself at 100%.

"The captain got me electrocuted, no big deal."

She made me sit down on a bio bed, and grabbed my wrist to examine my hand. Now that I looked again, it was pretty gross looking- some of the skin on the back of my hand was red and eerily shiny, while most of my fingers and all of my thumb were blistered, blackened and starting to peel. It hadn't been hurting that bad until now, as I hadn't paid it any attention. _Mind over matter, mind over matter… pain is all in your head. _She made me flex my hand, and I had to hold in a yelp. No, the pain was definitely not in my head.

"Looks pretty nasty," She said. "I'll go get Dr. Lawson to take a look at you, don't move."

She was off before I could protest and ask for anyone but him- why couldn't McCoy be on duty? I could actually stand McCoy- Lawson just made my blood pressure rise, he was not good for my health. Moments later Doctor tall, dark and British was standing by me looking condescending and bored as ever. I smiled coyly.

"What the hell did you get into?" He asked, grabbing my wrist more forcefully than Chapel had resulting in me hissing unintentionally. "Oops, sorry."

I knew he wasn't trying to be rough, but he was a guy and thus a lot stronger- and guys just don't pay attention sometimes.

"Playing around with electrical panels, half asleep. You know how it is."

"Why, may I ask?"

"My corridor lost power. And heat. Try sleeping through that."

"So, you and the captain both got shocked," He said, pulling out a scanner. "How bad was it? You weren't knocked unconscious, were you?"

"No, it was fine. I enjoyed it very much."

"Can you please be serious, just this once, Danville? Electrocution is not something you mess with."

I laughed, feeling giddy with pain and being over tired. My body had a strange way of reacting to things, my brain even more so. I could not take Lawson seriously, no matter how hard I tried.

"You're bossy when you're in doctor mode," I said. "It was really quick, didn't feel like much just couldn't move. Then there was a spark and it stopped. I think he absorbed most of it."

"You don't absorb electricity, it travels through things."

"Really?" I snapped, suddenly aware I had insulted my own intelligence. "Who would have ever thought that's what electricity does. I thought it just whispered sweet nothings and went on its way."

I knew he wanted to laugh, he just didn't show it. He could _not _handle me. I managed to keep my mouth shut long enough for him to finish scanning my hand and then my vitals. I wanted nothing more than to close my eyes and go to sleep, but I didn't want to sleep here in medical. Nurse Chapel came back with a basin of some kind of minty smelling liquid, and made me stick my entire hand in it. I complied, and instantly was reduced to tears as it stung my burns like acid. I tried to whip my hand out of it, but she held my arm so I couldn't- and that's when the relief set in. I don't know what was in there, but my skin went from being on fire one second to pleasantly numb the next. It didn't look any different when she finally took my hand out, but as long as it felt good I was happy.

Lawson started wrapping my hand in gauze, and I was secretly enjoying his surprisingly gentle touch (I think he was trying extra hard). I tried not to show how relaxing it was, I didn't want him getting any ideas. Right as he finished covering the gauze in a thin bandage, Kirk came in being hounded by a pissed off looking McCoy. I wanted to stay and watch, but Lawson and Chapel were done with me. He instructed me not to get it wet and to come back the next morning- of which I had no intention of doing so. I left medical in a daze, and went straight back to my quarters. It was still a bit cold in there, but not anything like it had been only an hour or two ago (I'd completely lost track of time, as always)- I merely curled up under every blanket I had and drifted off to sleep.

0600 came early, and I groggily hopped out of bed to get ready to start my shift. I checked my PADD and was excited to see that I would be on the bridge the next few days. I got in the shower and completely forgot that I wasn't supposed to get my hand wet until the bandages were already soaked through- so much for following directions, as per usual. I got dried off and dressed, and then attempted to fix the bandaging job that Lawson had done on my hand. The gauze was a mushy mess, and whatever had been on my hand was almost completely washed away and worn off, so I could feel some stinging. I ended up pulling it all off, and wasn't too grossed out by how my skin looked underneath. The red parts were now a healthier looking pink, and the blisters were deflated. A lot of the blackened skin had peeled off and was stuck to the gauze, and what was underneath was just red and tender. That minty liquid had worked wonders!

I rung the water out of the gauze as much as possible, and then tried to slip everything back on again. It didn't look pretty, but it was covering everything up so it would have to do. I headed out the door, ready to get to the bridge and get to work. Someone was waiting for me outside my quarters, and the second I stepped into the corridor I was intercepted. I jumped back, surprised (maybe I shouldn't have been) to see Lawson.

"How did I know I couldn't trust you to follow _any _of my directions?"

"I was going to medical right now!"

"No, you weren't. I think I know how you work by now, I've known you long enough."

"You don't know me at all," I said, trying to sound cool and mysterious. But then I realized how stupid I sounded. "I really am pretty predictable, aren't I?"

Lawson smiled, and got to work changing my bandages right there outside my door. The whole process took all of two minutes, of which I was impatiently intent on getting to the bridge on time. I was starting to realize he was being a lot nicer than he usually was- maybe I had finally gotten through to him that if he was going to have me (or anyone, for that matter) as a friend then he would have to at least be somewhat sociable. I ended up taking the long way to the bridge, giving myself time to pour over the thoughts springing up in my head. I don't know why I was overthinking things, maybe I should just accept the fact that we were friends and stop being bothered by his strange ways and personality- besides, we were crew mates, and when you are living in a vessel in space you kind of need to have _everyone _on your side.

When I got to the bridge, Lt. Kyle was there to fill me in on the fact that we had been travelling through a disruptive field caused by an ion storm, and it had affected several parts of the ship. There was no lasting damage, but it had been a great annoyance, especially in the dining hall where the coffee machines had been down for several hours. The power had been restored literally seconds before Kirk started messing with our electrical control panel, which had been the cause of our lovely shocking incident- we had essentially wasted our time. _The things you do for Starfleet…_


	15. Decisions, Decisions

The Enterprise was just not having very good luck lately. It was starting to feel like we were in a pattern- we would be fine for a while, and then we would have system issues due to outside forces. There was the Deneva incident where our engines and communications wouldn't work, and then our power failures from the electromagnetic field that resulted in Kirk and I nearly cooking ourselves- and more recently, we lost all communication with Starfleet due to a subspace relay being vandalized by what turned out to be renegade Vulcans posing as Romulans. Nobody I spoke to in engineering had a straight story on what went down, but what I did hear through the grape vine was that Kirk, McCoy and two security officers ended up as prisoners of the Romulan Empire and somehow Spock resolved the issue and made peace with the Romulans- a truce with one of the most dangerous cultures in the universe is a _very_ good thing.

When we finally got past the neutral zone and back in a sector of space that had a functioning subspace relay, my communicator was flooded with messages from home. I would expect my mother to realize that when you're in space you don't always get communications right off, seeing as she is in fact a member of Starfleet, but she still freaked out nonetheless.

_To: ENS Danville, Allison_

_From: CMDR O'Malley, Hillary_

_I haven't heard from you in weeks and am worried- are communications down or are you ignoring me? Did the Enterprise explode and we just don't know it yet? I have something important to discuss with you!_

_-Mom_

Leave it to my mom to jump to the worst possible conclusions- the flair for the dramatic ran in the family. I rolled my eyes and wrote a quick message to her, concerned as to what the important thing she had to discuss with me could possibly be.

_To: CMDR O'Malley, Hillary_

_From: ENS Danville, Allison_

_Calm yourself, mother dear. We are having problems with communications. Lots going on here. I'm fine, stop worrying. What do you want to talk to me about?_

I sent my transmission out, wondering how long it would take to get back to Earth- sometimes it could be no time at all, and sometimes it took forever. I had just enough time to change out of my uniform before I heard the ding that meant another message had come through. I was surprised to see it was a live video message, and was shocked when it actually opened. The sight of my mom made me extremely happy but also a little homesick- I couldn't tell where she was, but she was in her dress uniform, which meant she was on a base somewhere.

"Hey, I can't promise you won't cut out." I said.

"I'll be brief. You look good."

"You too. Where are you?"

"San Francisco. Where are _you?"_

"I don't know. We were near the neutral zone last time I actually knew where we were. Anyway- you wanted to talk?"

"Yes," She said, looking around her as if to make sure she was alone. "I'm being assigned to a ship for a short mission. We need a few more crew members and I made a transfer request for you."

I breathed in so fast that I choked.

"_What?" _I coughed.

"I'm first officer. I figured it would be good for us, and your career."

"Is that even legal?"

"I don't think anyone is going to care, you would be in engineering and I would be on the bridge- technically we wouldn't even be working together."

"I don't want to transfer, I have friends here. And it's _kind of _the flagship, so…"

Obviously she thought it was a great idea, I however did not. I didn't want to upset her, but I just couldn't see spending a lengthy amount of time with her ever working in my favor.

"Can you at least think about it? I think you would do well; it's a small ship- more responsibilities for you. Only thing is that you wouldn't be able to return to the Enterprise due to the nature of the mission." She added the last part in a rush, so I almost didn't hear her right.

"Oh, that just makes me want to even _more_!"

"Just think about it?"

"I will _think _about it. That's it. Don't send in the transfer, please?"

"Okay, but don't say no until you think on it!"

"I've got to go, mom, I'll talk to you later."

"Let me know soon! Love you!"

"Bye!"

I disconnected before she could try to convince me any more (not that it would work), and then got back to what I had been trying to do- sleep. It was easier said than done, now that she had me thinking about the possibility of transferring, it was all I _could _think about. I didn't want to leave the _Enterprise_; it was more like home to me than my actual home was! I never really felt like I belonged anywhere until I became a part of the crew- did I really want to go to an all new ship where I know nobody but my own mother…. Hell, who would want to be on a ship with their _parent _anyway? After tossing and turning for two hours, I realized I wouldn't be getting any sleep, so I got up and got dressed. Hopefully somebody would be awake to keep me company.

I ended up at Lawson's door, after remembering that Tremblay was on duty and I didn't exactly want to hang around engineering without working. I didn't even know if he was there, but I rang his door chime anyway. The door opened a moment later, and he stood there looking as bedraggled as I probably did.

"I didn't wake you up, did I?" I asked.

"No, I couldn't sleep." He answered.

"Neither can I. Can I talk to you about something?"

"Yeah, come on in."

I felt a little weird going into a guy's room, wondering what other people might think, but then I realized the corridor was deserted. I came in and sat down at his desk while he sat on the bed. His room wasn't all that different than mine, just arranged with everything the exact opposite and slightly less cluttered- of course, men tend to have a lot less stuff than girls. The first thing I noticed when I looked around at his desk space was a framed picture of him and a gorgeous woman looking very, very happy. I felt a pang of something… not jealousy? Loneliness? No, maybe it was jealousy.

"Who's that?" I asked. I wanted to know more about this special someone who was far better looking than me.

"That's Julia. My sister."

"You never told me you have a sister!"

"Well, now you know."

And to think I was feeling jealous.

"I have a step brother. He just graduated med school."

"I know."

"How do you know that? I never told you," I raised an eyebrow at him.

"Rachael told me… If you thought any of your life was private, you are sadly mistaken."

I laughed, and felt stupid. Of course, I forgot that I lived with one of his only friends when I was at the academy.

"So what does Julia do?" I don't know why I cared, but if he knew _so_ much about me without me knowing it, then why shouldn't I know more about him?

"She's a high school teacher… married… lives in Canada," He looked bored and disinterested in talking about his family- I didn't blame him; I could barely stand my own family sometimes. "What was it you wanted to talk about?"

Oh, right- I came here for a reason, not to be nosey. I told him everything my mom had told me, and explained what I actually knew about her position in Starfleet. She was Starfleet Intelligence, so clearly the "mission" that she wanted me to join had something to do with that- and the fact that she said I wouldn't be able to return to the _Enterprise_ due to the nature of the mission more or less confirmed that. The pros of joining her ship: seeing my mom every day. Cons: new captain, new rules, no friends, no _Enterprise, _seeing my mom _every day._

"I think you're answering your own question," Lawson said when I stopped explaining the situation. "You don't sound like you want to leave, so don't."

"Yeah, but if I _did _go then I could go up in rank faster… it's obviously not happening here. I've been an officer for almost three years and I'm still an ensign!"

"So? Chekov's an ensign, nothing wrong with that."

"He's also younger than me. And you're a lieutenant, how long have you been in Starfleet?"

"Two years… But, I'm also a doctor, my rank was basically handed to me. So, would you rather be higher in rank and unhappy with your assignment or stay where you are and actually like what you're doing?"

He really hit the nail on the head- I had more or less made my final decision, I just needed someone else to voice what I was feeling. We were interrupted when his communication panel whistled, and he got up to answer it with an apologetic look in my direction.

"Lawson, here."

"_It's McCoy," _came the voice on the other end._ "I've got three engineers down here with severe chemical burns, I could really use your help."_

"I'll be right there."

At the word engineers I felt my heart drop. Those were my people- "severe chemical burns" did not sound good.

"Don't worry," He said, and I realized I probably looked horrified. "If it were a real emergency he wouldn't _ask _me, he'd order me to get my ass down there. I'm sure they're fine."

We walked out together, him going in the direction of sickbay and I back to my room. Now that I had my mind made up, I could probably sleep.

* * *

I didn't get back to my mom right off, trying to keep up a pretense that I was actually thinking about her offer. I also didn't have the guts to tell her no and deal with the resulting guilt trip- but she also had to learn that although I was her blood, I had my own life and needed to live it without her in it (at least for the most part). I put it to the back of my mind for several days, and went on with my routine.

As I got ready to report to the bridge one afternoon, there was a ship wide briefing message that we were in orbit over a planet called Beta III, a desolate planet with no life forms- however, according to scans of the surface there was a whole _settlement_ of life forms… and not just any life forms, either- they were human. Not humanoid, _human. _I knew that it finally was going to be a marginally exciting day on the bridge, even if I just sat back and watched as the science crew did there thing- what could us engineers possibly have to do?

When I got to the bridge, the captain was in the center seat with Spock standing by him and Scotty was at the engineering station- we were officially in mission-mode. I sat down next to Scotty, and waited for some indication to do something. Scotty acknowledged me and filled me in on what was going on.

"Sulu and O'Neill are down there now investigating," He told me. "We're just waiting for them to get through to us."

I was a little nervous working with Scotty, just because I had to be on my game and make no mistakes. If he caught me not paying attention for one second and ended up doing something for me that I should have been doing, that would be as good as saying I was an incompetent, unreliable member of the crew and not worthy of serving on the bridge- not that we would have anything very difficult to do for the time being.

If there's one thing I learned in Starfleet, it's that a lot can change in a matter of minutes. Chekov finally picked up a transmission from the ground, but what came out of the speakers was pure static.

"Meester Sulu! Come in, Sulu!" Chekov exclaimed, frantically adjusting the bars on his control board. He finally turned around in defeat. "Keptin, no response!"

"Keep trying him, Chekov! Lieutenant Uhura, anything on the scans?"

"Negative, Captain- no sign of Sulu or O'Neill!"

Kirk turned back to Spock, and they spoke in hushed tones. Whatever was going on did not seem to be good- there was no good (or obvious, at least) reason that communication was not going through to them- well, other than the fact that our communication system seemed to be permanently on the fritz. Scotty and I did our best to divert extra power to the communications systems, but it was doing no good- they still couldn't get through to Sulu and scans were not showing anything. I didn't even notice that Kirk and Spock had gotten up and we're leaving until they were right behind us.

"Scotty," Kirk said. "We're beaming down to the surface, you have the con. There's some kind of power source down there that needs investigating. Can you spare Danville?"

"Aye," Scotty said without missing a beat.

I had to restrain myself from giving him a death glare; he didn't even have to deliberate whether I could be spared or not, was I that expendable? Resigning to my fate, I got to my feet and followed the captain and first officer off the bridge and onto the turbo lift. Another day, another away mission…


	16. Something Old, Something New

I don't know if it was the stupid black robes that we were wearing or if it was the fact that we had just been beamed down to a town that looked like something straight out of the middle ages, but I had a feeling that this was not going to be one of our best away missions. It probably would have been a great day to call out sick.

Nobody cared to explain why we were at this planet in the first place, but what I did know was that we had to find Sulu and O'Neill and investigate what the un-identified power source was… same old, same old. As for the robes, we were required by the all-powerful Prime Directive to blend in as much as possible, and judging by the people we saw wandering the cobblestone streets, we fit right in.

"Okay, this is officially weird," McCoy mumbled as we cautiously made our way into the crowded street. He'd done nothing but complain about our attire and being included on this mission since he joined us in the transporter room. "We just wandered into the middle ages!"

Stonewalls complete with arched doorways, heavy wooden doors, cobblestones… I was half expecting someone to jump us with swords and bows and arrows or maybe even get accosted by tavern wenches. Instead, the people seemed to be quietly content, walking around with vacant yet happy expressions.

"They don't appear phased by our presence," Kirk said quietly. "Look at them, it's like they're just _drifting _in a daze. Keep your eyes open for Sulu and O'Neill!"

I was so on edge as I watched the people walking around us that I reflexively reached under my robe and gripped my phaser the second one of them approached us. We had been explicitly instructed not to use our phasers except in case of emergency, but I wasn't taking any chances- there was something calming about the smooth metallic phaser against my hand.

"Greetings, travelers!" The overly happy looking woman said. She didn't appear to be packing any heat so I eased my hand off the phaser a little. "Landru be with you!"

_Andrew? Who the hell is Andrew?_

"Greetings. What's your name?" Kirk's usual shit-eating grin appeared out of nowhere, and I knew he was going into 'seduce the locals' mode that I'd only ever heard of, never witnessed. The woman continued on, not even acknowledging that he was speaking to her. "Hey, wait! Where are you-"

McCoy chortled. "The famous Kirk charm fails completely? This _is _a strange planet. I think I like it!"

"Landru be with you!" Some guy said. _Landru, not Andrew! Weird name. _

"Uh, captain," Yeoman Enright, our one security guy spoke up. "I think we've been noticed!"

I felt chills down my spine as I saw the tall, hooded figures approaching us from all sides. They held long poles, and if the tops of them had a blade on them (which they fortunately didn't) they would have very much resembled the grim reaper. We pulled in close to one another, back to back. I was just happy that Spock, Kirk, McCoy and Enright were all much larger than me and I could easily hide behind any of them and keep myself safe- the benefits of being female.

"Remember, no phasers!" Kirk hissed. I reluctantly removed my hand from its handle.

"Greetings, travelers. You are to come with us. It is the will of Landru." One of them spoke, his voice stern and lifeless.

"Where are you taking us? And who's Landru?" Kirk spoke up.

"All answers reside with Landru. You will come with us now."

Their poles lowered, and they brought them closer to us as if herding cattle. They didn't look very threatening, other than probably hurting like a bitch if one whacked us hard enough.

"Easy with that thing-" Enright snapped.

"Yeoman, don't!" Kirk shouted.

I barely turned my head before there was a flash of light and an awful zapping sound, and Enright went crashing to the ground. I didn't even see the pole make contact with him, but whatever those things were… I didn't want to be on the receiving end. I was not mentally prepared for any sort of confrontation, so I stood there (too afraid to move) while Kirk and Spock began throwing punches at the guys with the sticks- blood was flying and I'm pretty sure none of it was the captain's or the first officer's.

While I was busy being morally conflicted as to whether I should: jump in and start fighting with what little skill I had, pull out my phaser and break the rules, or retreat and call for help, I saw that McCoy was struggling to get Enright to his feet. I swooped in and grabbed his other arm. He wasn't fully unconscious, but he was completely out of it…. also, very much taller than me and quite heavy.

"Captain- more on their way!" McCoy warned, shooting a look back at the townspeople who were starting to gang up on us. It was starting to feel a little like Deneva… we never have much luck with locals.

"Time to get off the main road," Kirk ordered, leading us to a dark alley. He had his communicator open and was furtively speaking into it while trying to keep his voice down. "Enterprise, this is Kirk! Do you copy? Come in, Enterprise!"

Uhura's voice came through, but the static drowned out most of what she said. It always seemed to happen this way: things seem to be normal, overly friendly turned homicidal locals attack us, communicators decide to fail… clearly Starfleet had it out for the Enterprise since _nothing _they issue us _ever _works.

"-What about the ship?"

Uh-oh. Did I forget the most important part of the Starfleet recipe? Something _always _happens to our ship. I laughed unintentionally, earning a strange look from McCoy.

Scotty's voice replaced Uhura's. All I could pick up through the interference was 'tractor beam', but that was enough to get the idea that the Enterprise was currently screwed. While Kirk was trying to get more information from Scotty, Spock was busy examining the pole weapon thing that he'd nabbed from one of our hooded attackers.

"A puzzling weapon," Spock said, making me nervous with how close he was standing to me with the lightning rod or whatever the hell it was. "It appears significantly more advanced than its environment."

"Fascinating," I mumbled without thinking. McCoy snickered- there was nothing he enjoyed more than making fun of Spock, I had learned through experience.

"We're in trouble," Kirk announced, rejoining us after a somewhat failed call to the Enterprise.

"It would appear so," Spock finally out the weapon down and I relaxed a little. "The problems affecting the Enterprise are most likely connected to the strange power source we detected beneath the surface. But first- we should prepare for a physical confrontation."

The hooded guys had found us and were standing at the mouth of our secluded alley. I was really starting to hate the Prime Directive- there was no way I could take any of them on in hand to hand combat.

"I should have stayed in Sickbay," McCoy whined. "A sickbay in _Mississippi_, preferably."

They were closing in around us. Kirk shouted a warning, and before we could react one of them came from above, probably having jumped from the rooftop. Something was clearly off, since the aerial attacker started going after the others with his pole, kicking their asses with skilled swings.

"Okay, I'm officially confused-" Kirk said when the attacker had finished knocking down the others.

"Oh- the disguise! Sorry, didn't mean to startle you, but-" Sulu, of course! "Didn't you say a recon team's first priority is stealth?"

"Remind me to get you out of the pilot's chair more often, Mr. Sulu! Where's O'Neill?"

"Captured. Now that you're here we've got the numbers to break him out. This place is even more of a mystery than you thought, captain- follow me!"

Sulu lead us down a street to a door that had been left open, probably by him, which led into a small and sparsely furnished office of some sort. When we went out through another door, and came to a very wide, dimly lit staircase I realized this place was probably just a ruse disguising a basement of some sort. I was relieved when Enright was a little more recovered and McCoy could support him on his own- the significant height difference between the two men and me would have made for a difficult descent.

"You've seen that this place looks like a pre-industrial Earth settlement. People walking around in a daze." Sulu explained as we went down. "But it's when you get down below… that things really get strange."

Strange was right: the walls on either side of the stairway were tunnel-like, and a system of pipes and electrical cording ran along them to the surface. There were even porthole windows up high on the walls- completely unnecessary, and eerily familiar.

"Fascinating. This would appear to be mid-22nd-century technology." Spock mused.

"Not all that far from when the _Archon _supposedly went missing." Kirk's voice betrayed the same unease that I was beginning to get about our surroundings.

"Exactly, sir." Sulu confirmed.

"Captain, readings indicate we are approaching the origin of the strange power source that could be affecting our communication with the Enterprise."

"I gotta be honest, sir," Sulu said. "A lot of us were skeptical when you wanted to go on a hunt for a ship none of us had ever heard of. Turns out we all forgot Starfleet 101…" We turned the corner. "Never doubt your captain."

My heart dropped. What was before us was the most terrifying, yet probably the most awesome thing I had ever seen in my life. The pipes and wire tubing… it was all leading to the very epicenter of the 22nd-century technology. The entire saucer section of the _U.S.S. Archon _NCC-189 made up the back wall of this giant cavernous room. The nacelles stood up, buried in the floor and stretching up to the ceiling, framing a path that lead to a raised altar-like thing. Several of the hooded guys were up there, doing something to another figure sitting in a chair- O'Neill.

"_Holy Shit," _I whispered. I had to remind myself to take deep breaths and focus- we were going to have to disable whatever the tractor beam was _and _get past these hooded guys _and _get O'Neill back… too much stress.

"Okay," Kirk got into business mode. "McCoy, Danville- you stay back here with Enright, keep on lookout. Sulu: can you get us up there without them attacking right off?"

"Yeah, I got a plan."

The three of them went off, leaving me, McCoy and Enright to guard the stairs. I felt a little out of place, considering I was an engineer, _not _security- but our security guy was currently useless.

"Can you go back up and keep an eye on the door?"

"Yeah," I reluctantly agreed, not wanting to defy an order from a superior officer… even if it was McCoy. I was hoping to be able to watch Kirk, Spock and Sulu kick some more ass- but I guess _someone _had to be the lookout.

"If you see anyone… just yell."

I jogged up the stairs, drawing my phaser as soon as I was out of view of McCoy- there was no way in hell I wasn't going to protect myself. I could not wait to get back to the ship, coming here was a waste of time, especially since I wasn't even down there with them doing what I came to do. Enright was supposed to be the security detail, not me!

I went back through the door and into the dark entry room. I had just found something to keep the door propped open so a little of the light could come through, when someone grabbed me. Naturally, I screamed.

"MCCOY!"

Clearly I didn't do a thorough enough look around the room when I entered- and was not paying close enough attention to remember that I had personally shut that door behind us. I tried to wriggle out of the person's grasp and ended up dropping my phaser in the process. I knew there was a reason I never went in for Security.

"You will come with us- it is the will of Landru!"

"Tell Landru he can suck it. _BONES, HELP!" _

I managed to score a very nicely aimed kick, which effectively loosened the man's grasp on me, and I dropped to the floor. There were other people joining their comrade- I don't know how they found us, but they did. McCoy appeared in the doorway, still supporting Enright, and I ducked down as he started firing on the townies that were steadily piling in. I located my phaser and got to my feet.

"Should we go warn them?" I asked.

"I think it's a little late for that. We need to get out of here, I don't think we can help them."

We got out to the street, having to physically break through the crowd of people currently pushing their way into the underground lair. We got split up, but I just kept going in the direction we agreed on, and eventually Bones and Enright caught up to me. As soon as we were out of sight and in another dark alley, McCoy let the now fully conscious Enright lean against a wall to regain his bearings.

"How do you feel?" McCoy asked.

"Hungover," Enright groaned. "What the hell was that thing, a cattle prod?"

"Pretty much," I said. "They're like… phaser swords."

"Phaser swords? Really?" Trust McCoy to find fault with _everything _I say.

I went to the mouth of the alley to keep lookout, and barely a few minutes passed before some more people started coming our direction; they didn't see me, but I didn't want to take any chances.

"We need to keep moving," I suggested. "More coming this way."

We took off through the other end of the alley, coming out onto another side road- where there were several more people walking through. No matter which way we went, we were trapped. We did the only thing we could do- put on blank expressions and pretend to be like them.

"Landru be with you!" Some guy who passed way too close for my liking said.

"And also with you!" I replied, hoping I wasn't too obviously an outsider. I thought we were in the clear, but then I heard his voice again.

"You are not one with the body."

"Yeah, she's not one with a lot of things!" McCoy said, stunning the guy with his phaser. "Run!"

And we ran. I don't know where we were going, but we had to get away from these Landru-freaks. I did _not _want to become 'one with the body'. Up ahead, a door opened.

"Hey- in here!" A woman's voice called.

I stopped dead in my tracks, and looked to McCoy for orders.

"Who's there?" McCoy called.

"Someone who can help," She replied. "Now get in here before they see you!"

Seeing as we could either trust this woman and get out of the street or stay out here and deal with the townsfolk, we figured option A was the way to go. We hurried into the entryway of the tower, and she closed and locked the door behind us.

She was about my age, probably a little older, and she looked like the other townspeople did- thoroughly un-modern clothes, long hair that had never seen a salon, and of course a black cloak over her clothes like we were wearing.

"Who are you and why are you here?" She demanded.

"First things first- who are you and why aren't you like them?" McCoy asked.

"My name is Ariel. Are you with Starfleet?"

"Yes. How did you know that?"

"Come upstairs and we'll talk." Whoever she was, she definitely was not like the other people we'd run into so far.

"We're waiting for the rest of our group, we really should go find them-" Enright butted in.

"If you want to go back out there, be my guest. Otherwise… you're better off here."

We went upstairs. It was a steep and winding climb up, considering it was a tower, but the 360 -degree views when we got to the top were so worth it. I found myself admiring the city as a whole, now that we were no longer being pursued on ground- I was so used to my life back home with the mix of modern buildings and older ones, and I'd never seen anything like this place.

"So… how do you know about Starfleet?" McCoy pried.

"How do you think we all got here?" She started. "I'm a descendent of the crew of the Archon, as are many others. Some of us are free; some are under the influence of Landru. I grew up with stories of Starfleet, passed down from my great-grandparents who were on the landing party before the _Archon _crashed. I recognized your weapons… they're not the same, but close enough."

"Technology's changed a lot in the past hundred years," McCoy confirmed.

"So how are you normal and they're… crazy?" I asked.

"That would be Landru. He's not so much a person as a computer program. Several of us have avoided being made 'one with Landru' as they call it." She had been looking out one of the windows and something seemed to have caught her attention. "I think I found the people you were looking for!"

McCoy ran to the window and looked out, visibly excited.

"Hey! Up here!" He called, probably attracting the attention of everyone within a mile radius.

Enright ran back downstairs to go let them in, while I went to another window to see if they were really down there.

"Don't shoot you idiot, it's me!" McCoy snapped as Kirk's phaser pointed up at us.

"Bones!" He looked very amused and happy to see him. "How'd you get up _there_?"

Soon Kirk, Sulu, and Spock carrying an unconscious O'Neill joined us.

"You're lucky I spotted you!" McCoy said. "Actually, she did- Captain James T. Kirk, meet Ariel. Ariel, Captain James T. Kirk."

Figures, Kirk looked _very_ happy to be introduced to a new female- especially one not trying to capture us.

"You… you're not one of them?"

"I am very much 'one of them', captain."

Ariel dove into the whole story, now that we were all there. Cornelius Landru was a scientist who started a colony on Beta III with the permission of Starfleet. He created a computer that was super intelligent and held his ideals and was used to run the colony. At least that is what he said he was doing- he had an ulterior motive. He used the machine to brainwash colonists, turning them into mindless puppets that would do his bidding and revere him as a sort of god. The _Archon _came to stop Landru, but the tractor beam pulled it down to the surface, destroying it. The colony was cut off from Starfleet, and the colony became an independent civilization. Landru ruled over the colony, hiding away his technology and turning everyone into his followers. After his death, they continued on worshiping him- even turning the remnants of the _Archon _into a temple dedicated to him. The temple also hid the machine, which was what still held a grip on the minds of the colonists… that was currently pulling our ship down to the surface.

"We can help," Kirk said, eagerly. "We can destroy Landru and free these people. We can bring them back- reconnect them with the rest of the Federation-"

"Captain, I'm getting something!" Sulu exclaimed, holding up his communicator, which was emitting static infused chatter. "I think it's the Enterprise!"

Kirk took it from him. He had Scotty on the line- we were (probably) saved! He confirmed that what had happened to the _Archon _was currently happening to the _Enterprise, _and there was only a matter of hours before it would also become scattered parts on the surface.

"Lock onto us, Scotty! 7 to beam out… actually, make that 8!"

* * *

It was a relief to get back to the ship, but then I remembered that it was also being pulled down to imminent destruction and my feeling of unease crept back. I was physically and mentally exhausted, and definitely working overtime, but if we were about to crash and burn or find a way to save ourselves then I had to at least do something productive.

Scotty had estimated that we had about six hours left, if that, before we would crash. I had faith that we would find a solution and make it out okay, but I also knew to expect the worst and hope for the best. Lt. Spires put me to work as soon as I got to Engineering, and I distracted myself from thinking about our situation by burying myself into helping maintain thrusters. Anything we could do to buy us some time, we had to do it, even if it didn't seem to be doing a damn thing.

A few hours passed before we got any more orders. I was on my third cup of coffee, having been awake for almost 24 hours (which was starting to become a common occurrence, unfortunately), and starting to get a little manic with all the menial tasks we were doing. Scotty asked for some of us to clear out cargo bay 17, the largest and least empty of all of them, and I joined the group only to put my energy to good use- standing around pressing buttons when you have the caffeine jitters is the worst possible thing to do. Ensign Ishihara and I teamed up to move some of the smaller crates while we made the guys move the bigger stuff. She seemed to be very chipper considering the life or death situation we were in, but I was appreciative of her boundless energy since I had none.

"You look tired," She stated.

"Long day. As always."

"Gotta love those away missions. How did this one go?"

"Not great. More crazy people. Mind control shit… you know- same old, same old."

It didn't take long for the 10 of us to move all the stuff off to the sides, leaving a big empty space. I wasn't sure what it was for, but I had an idea- and if I was right, then either we had the smartest captain ever or the stupidest. Scotty came in and approved of our moving job after having Lt. Greene and Kyle measure out the space and confirmed the dimensions as being acceptable.

"Ensign Danville," Scotty said, surprising me out of my daze.

"Yea- yes, sir?"

"Can ye stay here and watch- I'll be beaming the computer thing here shortly. I need someone who's seen it to make sure it actually _gets_ here. Can ye do that?"

"I haven't seen it, I didn't get that close." I admitted.

"But ye know how big it is, right? You can confirm or deny that we at least beam _something_ here, right?"

"Yes. But what happens if something ends up here that shouldn't… like a bunch of angry people?"

"I don't think that will happen, Danville, I won't be locking in on any life signs. Just stay here, it shouldn't be long. And stay out of the way, I don't need to be beaming it right on top of you."

Would my day ever end? As in, not end _forever,_ that was the last thing I wanted… Sometimes I wonder why I ever joined Starfleet. I kept the communication line open on the wall panel, and parked myself on a crate and waited for further instruction. It was a long, slow wait, and it took all of my willpower to stay awake- so much for my caffeine rush. Finally, after what felt like hours, I heard something.

"All clear down there, Danville?" Scotty's voice came from the wall.

"Yeah, you're good." I answered.

"Beaming up in 3… 2..."

His voice was drowned out by the loud scraping sound that the huge computer thing made when it appeared right in front of me in the cargo bay. All of the connections had been severed, and the tubes and wiring were settling to the floor, sparking and smoking. I immediately jumped into action, not forgetting my training, and grabbed a fire extinguisher. There was a five-minute grace period for all fires before the oxygen in the storage bay got sealed off- I didn't want to suffocate, so I moved fast.

"Danville, what's the verdict?" Scotty's voice called out through the speakers.

"Got a little fire situation, but it's here!" I yelled, rushing to get at some violently sparking wires before they set anything else alight.

I circled the thing a couple times, making sure I got all the sparking taken care of and also examining it. It was huge, about 12 feet tall, and sort of resembled and industrial washing machine. I couldn't understand how this thing could have enslaved the entire population of people (save a few)- how could a computer rule peoples' lives? How could something so ridiculous looking be so powerful? And why did some of the parts have Starfleet manufacturing codes?

Scotty and Chekov soon joined me. They were of course incredibly excited over the damn thing- mostly due to their success at beaming it on board. I brought Scotty's attention to the most visible manufacturing code stamped on the base of one of the electrical connector ports.

"Those look familiar to you?" I asked.

"Huh… that's definitely Starfleet code… It's old, but it's Starfleet. What the _hell?"_

"What does that mean?" Chekov looked confused. "This was built by Starfleet?"

I shrugged. "So, are we still being pulled down to the planet?"

We were good to go, thrusters working at 100% and no sign of any kind of tractor beam. I was spent, and could not stand to do anything else productive, so I asked to be relieved of duty. I headed straight for my quarters, my brain numb and more than ready to be turned off for the next several hours.

I should have known that a good night's sleep was asking too much. Lawson was at my door… _sleeping _at my door. I didn't even know what to think- why was he here and not doing something productive like the rest of the crew? Did he not realize that I was _working _and not in my quarters? I prodded at his leg with my foot, and when that didn't work I full out kicked him. He scrambled to get up, his motor functions not really working. It was then that I caught a whiff of alcohol- I'd never known Lawson to drink… and why now when we were in a crisis situation?

"Lawson, what the hell are you doing here?" I demanded, trying to hide my amusement at his pathetic state.

"Spending my last moments alive wallowing," He groaned. "I was _hoping _you would join me."

"Are you serious right now? Shouldn't you have been, I don't know, working?"

He looked pathetic- his eyes were glazed over, hair sticking up all over the place.

"No patients in sickbay… why, where have you been?"

"Same things I'm always doing! Can you move? I'd really like to go sleep now."

"You could sleep here with me," He slurred. A look of horror came over his face. "Tha's not what I meant!"

"How much did you drink?"

He pulled out the bottle he was drinking from, which only had a little bit left. I confiscated it and took a sip. It tasted nasty, and I nearly choked as it hit my throat.

"What is this shit? It's disgusting!"

"Saurian Brandy… McCoy gave it to me. Or I stole it? Can't remember."

I rolled my eyes, and opened my door. This was a whole different side of Lawson that I'd never seen, but I kind of liked this version of him… he wasn't being a stuck up little know-it-all jackass. I figured I also owed it to him to take care of him in his drunken state, as he had taken care of me when I was blitzed out of my mind back at the academy… and that hadn't been pretty.

"Come on in. You can sleep on the floor."

As soon as we were in my quarters, I went in search of a place to hide the alcohol- behind the bathroom mirror won out. I got myself cleaned up and ready to hit the hay while I was in there, and when I came out Lawson was _not _where I'd last seen him. Of course, he decided that by me letting him sleep on my floor I clearly meant my bed; He was splayed out across it, fast asleep.

"Lawson, get your ass up- you are _not _sleeping on my bed!" I shouted. Anyone else would probably have been more than happy to have a cute guy on their bed- but I had been awake for longer than a day, running around, dealing with high stress situations… the only thing in the world I wanted was to sleep, and now that was being taken from me. I don't know where I found the strength, but in one swift move I managed to push him up and over the side of my bed. He fell to the floor with a thud and a groan, but didn't seem to wake up.

"Sweet dreams, doctor."

* * *

A/N: Well I have been very, very busy- currently taking a creative writing class for school…. Not as easy as it sounds and it makes writing no fun for me. I am trying to get this updated but it's hard with all these assignment deadlines! Thanks to those who have been sticking with me, and thanks to new followers! Reviews are welcome any time!


	17. Enjoy The Silence

My internal alarm clock had me up by 0600, although I didn't have to be back in engineering until 1700. I rolled over to go back to sleep, but nearly jumped out of bed when I saw a body on my floor. It took a moment for my sleep-fuzzy brain to remember that I'd had an unwelcome overnight guest. There was too good of an opportunity in front of me to make his life miserable to pass up. I got up, trying to be as quiet as possible so as not to wake him, and crept to the bathroom. I located my seldom-used makeup bag and fumbled around for a while. Eyeliner secured, I went back to Lawson to execute my revenge for him delaying my beauty sleep.

I felt awkward being so close to him while he slept, able to feel his warm breath on my hand as I went to work. I had to hold in laughter as I executed my handicraft, I didn't want to accidentally wake him before my masterpiece was done. At first I thought a handlebar mustache would suffice, but seeing as he was full on passed out and not responding to my touch, I couldn't resist doing more. Finally satisfied and my eyeliner pencil in need of a sharpening, I got up and admired the end result in the limited light my PADD was currently providing. Handlebar mustache, goatee, and very Vulcan eyebrows- I was an _artist!_

"What are you doing?"

I jumped, and hid the pencil in my fist. Lawson sat up, running a hand through his disheveled hair. I sighed in relief when he didn't smudge my masterpiece- it was only a matter of time before the itchiness of the eyeliner got him aware of it.

"I was just going to wake you up, I thought you might have to work."

"Oh _shit, _what time is it?"

"Almost noon," I lied.

"I have to go- you shouldn't have let me sleep so late!" He stumbled to his feet, rushing for the door.

"Sorry, I didn't realize that was in my job description… among other things."

He glared at me as he got to the door; his newly re-drawn eyebrows making him look exceedingly Spock-like.

"Have a fantastic day, enjoy the hangover!" I called as he sprinted out the door.

I crawled back into bed, laughing into my pillow. I could not _wait _for him to discover his altered appearance- sure, I'd have to watch my back for a while, but it would be totally worth it.

* * *

That evening in engineering I assisted Scotty and Tremblay in a thorough examination of the device formerly known as Landru. We didn't hook it up to any power source for fear of it taking over the ship or some other less-than-pleasant situation. Scotty had been given instruction from the captain to check out every part of it that we could without damaging it- as Engineers, we were experts at dissecting machines of all sorts and leaving no trace. Tremblay, being the computer specialist, was itching to plug the damn thing in out of morbid curiosity.

"Is it really going to hurt us if we turn it on for a few minutes?" She begged.

"Depends, do you _want _to possibly have the ship crash and burn and all of us die? Because if you do, then yes: go right on ahead." Scotty said, carefully using a cutting laser to access one of the welded shut panels in the back of the contraption.

"There's no way this thing is that dangerous," Her tone was verging on whining. "What, is it sentient? There's ways to get around an artificial personality, it's pretty easy…"

"_Trust_ me, it's not even worth hooking up," I interrupted her computer geek spiel. "Those people down there… friggin' crazy. I think we're bad enough already without computerized influence."

Scotty pried the panel away, exposing the inner wirings. It looked surprisingly normal. Harmless. My eye caught sight of the panel that Scotty had set aside, and my heart leapt up into my throat. All computers and parts have manufacturing codes and labels of where they were made- this one confirmed our earlier suspicions.

"Scotty… I don't think we were supposed to see that_._"

Scotty took a look at the label I was pointing at and whistled.

"Yeah, I think our work here is done- I'll notify the Captain."

It didn't take long for Kirk and Spock to join us. Tremblay and I stood by quietly, awaiting further instruction. Scotty explained our findings.

"When it first came on board Danville recognized the manufacturing codes… I gave it the benefit of the doubt, thinking that they could have just used spare parts from the _Archon _wreckage… but look-"

He showed them the panel, and the inside of the device. Every little part was Starfleet property- older, but definitely made by our own people.

"_Starfleet _helped Landru?" Kirk looked like he didn't want to believe it, but the evidence was pretty… evident.

"I think there's a very good reason they kept this whole Beta III thing covered up." Scotty said.

Kirk and Spock both looked inside the device and all around it. It didn't look very different than what we were used to on board the ship as far as computer systems go, but it was complex.

"I suggest we not examine it further," Spock said.

"Agreed," Said Kirk. "Close it up and cover any trace that you got into it as best you can. If Starfleet really has something to do with this then it's probably best that they don't know that we are on to them. We're going to have to play dumb."

"Right. I was never here." Scotty announced, getting the panel back in place to weld shut.

"Of course you weren't. Tremblay, Danville- what are you doing here?"

"No idea, sir." Tremblay said.

"Going to go delete the security tapes, sir!" I announced cheerily.

"Right on, ladies!"

Spock looked confused, I think. I couldn't read his expression, but our informal banter wasn't exactly what he expected. I hadn't actually planned on going to security to do as I had just volunteered myself, but now I had no choice. Tremblay was already helping Scotty get to work, so I followed the captain and Spock out of the storage bay, no longer needed. Spock went off in the direction of the science labs, leaving Kirk and I to walk towards the nearest turbo lift. When we were in the privacy of the lift he turned to me to talk.

"So what's this about a transfer request?"

"_What?" _I sputtered, caught off guard.

"I just got it this morning, a request to transfer to the _USS Enforcer. _Why do you want to transfer?"

"I never signed anything!" My voice was getting very high pitched as it so often did when I was angry or excited.

"It was sent by Commander O'Malley, approved by Captain Mendoza."

"O'Malley's my mom. I never said I would agree to the transfer."

"Wait, what?"

"My mother- Commander O'Malley- wanted me to transfer onto her ship. I said I would think about it, meaning _no. _I'm not transferring, I'm happy here. Unless of course you want to get rid of me?" I added.

"No, of course I don't want you gone. I thought maybe there was something you weren't telling anyone."

The lift stopped at my destination, right outside the main security office.

"I'll deny the transfer. But you're going to have to face up to Commander O'Malley, because I'm not dealing with her.."

"Yes, sir." I remembered that my mom had been teaching a class at the Academy at the time that Kirk had been there- something told me he wasn't exactly on her good side.

That minor inconvenience settled, I headed for the security office, not quite sure what I was doing exactly or whom I had to talk to. The security office has to be the quietest section of the ship; most of the security personnel have other duties in different departments that they due when not on a security shift. I often found myself working alongside some of them in Engineering, including the very burly Lieutenant Hendorff who was the first one I found to talk to when I walked in the offices.

"What can I do for you, Ensign?" He greeted me. While he was the type of person you didn't want to get on the bad side of, due to his sheer size and reputation for ass kicking, he was one of the nicest guys on the ship.

"Can you tamper with some security tapes? Captains orders?"

I had never seen the security camera viewing room before, so when I walked in and saw live video feed from literally _everywhere _on the ship I was a little overwhelmed. I thought that someone sat in here all day and watched each screen, but judging by the room's emptiness that wasn't the case. You couldn't pay me enough to try to keep up with the screens- it was too much.

"So where _isn't _there cameras?" I asked Hendorff.

"Personal quarters. Bathrooms. Some locations that I'd have to kill you if I told you… So- what sector is it we are tampering?"

"Cargo bay 17."

"I figured. And _why _are we doing this? Something to do with that computer thing that got beamed up?"

"I'd tell you but I'd have to kill you." I cringed at my corny comeback.

"I'd like to see you try." He pulled up video feed from Cargo bay 17 on a larger monitor, and began dragging the time back several hours to when it was beamed up. I watched in amusement as I set the computer on fire and then made it disappear- and I was damn good at running backwards! "I can delete the feed at the moment that gets beamed on board and make it look like a power surge killed the camera. But you should probably make up some kind of report saying that all power was lost in the area to make it more realistic."

"Sounds legit." I agreed. "Thank you, you're awesome!"

"I know, I know- enough with the flattery."

I don't think Hendorff realized how much this little lie could be helping us. If whoever in Starfleet was involved in this little… experiment that we interfered with, found out that Scotty, Tremblay and I uncovered the true ownership of the device- we were screwed. Some things in life you are best not to know, and this was one of them. I don't know what scared me more, the prospect of someone so mentally screwed up to enslave the minds of thousands of people actually served in Starfleet or the thought that maybe Starfleet itself was not all it claimed to be.

* * *

Tremblay and I went to get dinner together as we often did when we worked coinciding shifts. It was quiet on board, what we liked to call the calm before the storm- it wouldn't last for long, it never did. We never took our down time for granted, but then again there was not much to do when we weren't in a crisis situation. We got our food and sat down, with not much to talk about. It's no fun when you can't even discuss your away missions.

"So…" I said.

"So." Tremblay replied, stabbing at her salad resignedly. "Same ship, different day."

"Yes, ma'am." I nearly choked on a piece of carrot when I saw _someone_ looking in our direction. "Oh, _shit. _She's still on this ship?"

"Who?" Tremblay turned around in her seat.

"No, don't look!"

Too late- Yeoman Ivers was strutting right toward us. I don't remember giving her any kind of look that said 'hey, come over here' but apparently my face betrayed me. At least she didn't have a tray; we wouldn't have to suffer eating with her.

"Hey, Danville! I haven't seen you in forever!"

"Yeah, I know. I was gone for six months."

"Really? Where?"

"The Academy."

"Oh yeah, what were you doing there?"

"Advanced combat training. I took a special course on Klingon martial arts- pretty intense stuff."

I could see her eyes widen a bit, but she kept smiling her superficial smile. I was trying so hard to be nice. Not really. Tremblay was making an effort not to laugh at my bullshitting.

"That's really neat. I have to get back to work- I'll see you around!"

I breathed a sigh of relief once she was gone from the dining room. Tremblay started laughing so hard she was nearly in tears.

"Who the hell was that?" She asked, wiping her eyes.

"Ivers, the one that beat me up when I first got here. We're best friends now."

"Wait, why have I never heard this story?"

And then we finally had something to talk about. I recounted my tale of how I met my archenemy and found out that the security field was _definitely _not for me. And my intolerance for booze, but everyone that knew me knew that already. And then Tremblay in turn told me the story of _her _first day on the Enterprise, which was not too long before I came on. Everyone in Starfleet knew what happened with the Romulans and the destruction of Vulcan, but I had never been told first hand what it was like to be on the Enterprise during the ordeal. Tremblay didn't go into too much detail; I could tell it was a tough subject due to the fact that so many crewmembers were killed. The best thing that came out of the situation, other than being initiated into the crew of the Enterprise, was her friendship with Lt. Kyle. They had never really talked in classes, but ended up working together down in Engineering, of course. They got stuck in a broken down turbo lift when the Romulan ship fired on the Enterprise, and became friends by default. The rest was history. We left the dining room and continued the conversation on the way to the turbo lift to go to our respective quarters.

"So how did you and Lawson meet?"

"Through my roommate. He's kind of a jerk but he just decided I was his friend, I guess. We never really 'hung out' we just always seemed to be in the same place."

"I saw him this morning," She said. "He had a new moustache. And eyebrows."

It was my turn to die of laughter.

"I figured you had something to do with it."

"He was drunk last night and passed out in my room. It had to be done."

"Why was he drunk when we were on red alert? That's a little… irresponsible."

"Hey, if I wasn't down on the planet I probably would have been, too. If you think you're going to die, wouldn't you want to be wasted?"

The lift came to Tremblay's deck first, so we bid each other adieu. A couple guys from the science department got on, clearly having an argument. I listened in, but they were so far off in nerd-land discussing theoretical physics that I just couldn't pay attention. They got off by the science labs, and someone else got on. Just my luck, it was Lawson. The second we made eye contact I busted out laughing. Obviously he had removed my makeup job, but I knew he was probably pissed.

"You better watch your back, Danville. I will get revenge. You won't even know it's coming."

"Yeah, but I do know it's coming- you just told me."

"No, you're going to forget. Don't worry, I keep my promises: could be tomorrow when it happens… could be in five years. I'm _very _patient."

Somehow I wasn't threatened- I just didn't care. The lift stopped at my hallway, and I glared at Lawson as I got off.

"Have a good night, Danville. Don't sleep too soundly." I rolled my eyes and went on my way. I don't know what he was madder about- my lying about the time or my artwork. Probably both equally- it didn't really matter, I was a marked woman regardless and his retribution would probably outdo everything I had done. I'd already sort of gotten him with McCoy's help before; I was due for some fallout, big time.

* * *

A/N: Yeah, this is sort of a filler chapter. Sorry. The lack of reviews leaves me kind of uninspired. Busy, busy life I have right now. My online classes are killing me- just when I think I have caught up, something else comes up. Should have another chapter soonish (I say that, but you never know…)!


	18. Overrun

It was a normal, routine overnight shift in engineering. I had a coffee in hand, and no spring in my step as I went about my duties, monitoring systems and keeping the warp core running. The only thing keeping me from falling asleep, other than my coffee, was having Lt. Steele to keep me company. There had been a time when even being in the same section as him was awkward, following the incident with his girlfriend kicking my ass, but we were now able to converse without any weirdness.

"Hey," Steele had over to where I was sitting at the main warp core watch station, and looked as tired as I felt.

"Hey, yourself," I replied.

"Haskell just called from security, said there's been sensors going off in Aux Control… you weren't in there, were you?"

"I haven't moved from here in a couple hours. Was anyone else supposed to be working tonight?"

"Just Hunt, but he's been with me the whole shift."

"Hmm. That's weird."

"You think?"

"Maybe it's a ghost? Should we investigate?"

"Sure, can you borrow a tricorder from your boyfriend? Maybe we can get some EMF readings!"

"Funny. He's not my boyfriend, okay?"

Steele put his arms up in the don't-shoot position, and backed away. I got up and walked with him to the Auxiliary Control room. Being the brave one, I scanned my palm to open the door, and led the way into the dark room. My foot hit something soft, and my scream nearly drowned out the tiny squeak that emanated from whatever the hell it was. I scrambled backwards, Lt. Steele laughing once the culprit was revealed.

"What the _fuck _is that?" I panted. "Someone's pet?"

"I have no idea… looks like a headless, limbless guinea pig. I can see why you screamed, it's terrifying."

"Not funny!"

It was when he turned the light on that we realized we may have a problem… there were more of the things, all over the floor, on panels, and crawling in and out of the vents that led to the rest of engineering… we had an infestation. Steele got on the wall communicator to security.

"Haskell! You better get down here,"

"What is it? Are you guys okay?"

"We're fine… but you'll want to see this. I hope you're not allergic to fur."

Petty Officer Haskell and Yeoman Rand came to engineering right away, phasers drawn and ready. We shut the door to Auxiliary control, but some of the little fluffy balls of death had already gotten out. I wasn't necessarily afraid of them, but I didn't know what they were and whether they could bite or get nasty substances on me, so I kept my distance.

"What the hell?" Haskell laughed, holstering his phaser.

"Right?" Steele kicked a pile of them back towards the door.

"Are they multiplying?" I had counted about 10 of them outside the confines of auxiliary control, but now the number had seemed to double. My eyes were starting to itch and water- whatever they were, I was apparently allergic.

"Looks like it," Haskell said. "Rand lets do a sweep, see if there's more anywhere else."

I went back to my station, wanting to distance myself from the fur balls and let them take care of the situation. Somehow, they had already spread- they were all over the walls, the panels… everywhere. My body didn't know whether to scream or sneeze. I ran back to the others and found Yeoman Rand.

"They're all over the consoles, I don't know what to do!"

"There's not much we can do, they're everywhere," She looked worried. "I think we may have accidentally let some in when we were taking apart the Klingon weapon earlier…"

"Wait, wait… what? Why was I not told of this before I went on duty? How long ago was this?"

"A few hours."

"And they somehow mated and had full grown babies in that time? What is their gestation period, ten minutes?!"

"_Maybe _even shorter than that."

"So, which one of us is going to break the news to the captain? I vote not me, I'm getting out of here before I die of anaphylactic shock or being eaten by those little bastards."

"I'll tell him. But you're not leaving, nobody is… if we open any of the doors we risk letting them out into the rest of the ship, it's best to contain them here."

"Wonderful," I walked, coughing up a lung, with Rand to the main doors. She placed a security override on all exits, not allowing anyone to enter or us to leave- I never felt more claustrophobic in our wide-open engineering bay. She got on a comm panel as the rising tide of furballs overtook everything.

"Captain, this is Rand in Engineering," She said.

"_Go ahead, Yeoman!"_

"We have a problem, sir! We've been breaking down the Klingon weapon to study it, and… well, it looks like something from the planet was stuck inside, and before we knew it… They were everywhere!"

I gave her thumbs up to let her know she sold it. Place the blame on the weapon, not on us- that's the way to do it!

"_Of course they are…"_

"Sir, I'm keeping Engineering on lockdown! Nobody in or out! But these things don't seem to want to stop multiplying!"

There was silence, marred only by a rising level of squeaking coming from the creatures, while we waited for Kirk to answer. Finally he was back with us.

"Rand, get everybody out of Engineering. I'm not going to let you drown in there! Try to secure one- and_ only_ one- of the things and meet me in sickbay!"

"Aye, sir!"

Securing one of them was a non-issue, and I could swear I heard purring when Rand scooped it up. If they had any discernable features then maybe I would have considered them cute, but right now they were freaking me the hell out. Lucky for me, my shift was nearly over, so as soon as we all got out of the doors and had the computer do a lockout again, I dismissed myself. I stopped at a console on the way back to my quarters to check something.

"Computer, locate crewmember Lawson."

"Location verified, Deck 7 room 126."

His room, that was easy. I made my way there; He answered the door right away.

"Everything okay?" he asked, letting me in.

"Yeah," I sighed, and flopping down at his desk. "Crazy shit going on, as per usual."

"Have you been crying? Your eyes are red."

"No. You wouldn't believe what's in engineering right now."

"Try me."

"No, really, you wouldn't unless you saw them. They're ridiculous."

"And _they_ are what, exactly?"

"I don't know! I'm an engineer not a xenozoologist!"

That got him to crack a smile. If anyone would appreciate the creatures currently on board, it would be our friend Rachel Decker. I sneezed as I reminisced fondly.

"So… are they like cats, or something? You've got to help me out here."

"Imagine a guinea pig with no legs or any features. Now picture them multiplying at a rate of lets say, 10 per second, and crawling over ever single surface of engineering. _Disgusting!"_

"Are you an animal hater, now?"

"No, of course not! They're just… really weird. Think about it, if they're popping out new ones that quickly, they've got to be having sex _constantly!"_

"Doesn't sound like a half bad life."

"Oh my god, I need to shower. Do you have any bleach?"

"You're so dramatic."

"Are you just realizing that now?"

* * *

If I thought I would get out of dealing with the pest problem in engineering by having the night off, I was terribly wrong. When I got in for my shift the next day, I was recruited to help clean up the currently frozen creatures. Engineering was now the temperature of a relatively decent Maine winter day, which was pretty damn cold. Scotty explained that in order to stop them reproducing, they had to be in a frigid environment. Most of them were dead, but not due to the temperature- like insects, they had a very short life span, hence the rapid reproducing.

I wasn't the only one getting sniffles from the critters; if someone had walked into engineering unawares, they would have thought they'd stumbled on a very sad, mass funeral for beloved pets. Ninety percent of my shift was spent scooping up the varmints into the large storage containers that had been brought in, the other ten percent sneezing. Some of the guys were actually enjoying themselves, and posing for pictures while buried in piles of the things. It was kind of funny until one of the fur balls came flying into my face, leaving me with a clump of fur in my mouth. That was my breaking point.

Lt. Steele was laughing, so I knew it was him that threw it, trying to get a rise out of me. I don't know why I felt so angry, it was pretty funny… but the fact that I had fur _in _my mouth, and these things had been who knows where doing you know what… I snapped. _No need to make a scene. Just walk away. _I calmly threw a few more critters in the bin, and then made my way for the corridor. So what if I had two more hours on my shift, I didn't want to waste my time doing stupid clean up work and dealing with immature idiots that were higher rank than me. Was that why I was angry?

I went for the turbo lift, and as soon as I stepped on someone was calling for me.

"Danville, wait!"

I pressed the close door button, but Steele was already stopping the door and getting on. I pressed it several more times for good measure, but my efforts were fruitless.

"What's wrong, you look pissed?"

"Good observation. Gold star for you."

"Did that hurt you? I only meant it as a joke; they seemed pretty soft and harmless. I'm sorry."

"It's not that."

Steele stopped the lift.

"So what is it? Tell me."

"I'm pissed off because someone's stupid mistake got us into this mess, and it wasn't me… and now instead of doing my job, I'm working as a fucking custodian?"

"We all are, it's not just you."

"That's not my point. I didn't join Starfleet to do anything other than my job, and I seem to always end up doing stupid, pointless shit. And I never get a promotion or any kind of thank you when I actually do something good... do you know what it is? Favoritism! They don't like me! That's why I always get sent on the dangerous missions, and then when I'm here… 'Hey, go clean up this mess, go make coffee, patch this hull breech with your body!' And then people like Rand get away with bringing life forms on board with _no _punishment whatsoever. I don't see her cleaning up down here, where the hell is she?"

"Wait… you're angry because you're jealous of Yeoman Rand?"

"That's not what I said!"

"Rand was down here all night, along with the others that were partially responsible. Believe me, she's not getting special treatment. You do realize you outrank her, anyway?"

"Whatever. I'm done ranting, now, you can start the lift."

"Are you sure? Anything else you want to get off your chest?"

"There's lots of things I could bitch about, but we don't have all day."

"Do you know what pisses me off? Raisins."

"_What_?"

Steele was standing right next to me now, leaning casually against the back wall of the turbo lift. He had his trademark smirk plastered on his face.

"You know when you see a chocolate chip cookie, and you get all excited… and then you bite into it, and bam- raisins! That's the worst."

"That was a little off topic," I scoffed.

"But I made you smile, didn't I?"

I rolled my eyes, and went for the button to resume the lift. Steele intercepted my hand, and spun me around in some kind of dance so I was in his arms. His face was so close to mine, I could smell his aftershave. He kissed me, and for a moment I didn't know what to do. I kissed back.

He was with Ivers. I got my ass kicked because of this guy. A taken man was _kissing _me. There are many crazy things I would do with no problem, but cheating was not one of them. I wasn't the one cheating, but I didn't want to be the reason for it. I broke the kiss, and ignoring the gaze he was giving me, drew my arm back and clocked him right in the mouth.

It wasn't until I was back in my quarters, running my skinned and bloody knuckles under cold water that I fully realized what had just happened. Not only had I just had an awkward kiss in a turbo lift, I had also just punched a superior officer in the face.

"Well, now, _fuck."_

* * *

_**A/N: All previous chapters have been rewritten- if you've been reading this since i first started, they're all cleaned up and some completely different. Some stuff just didn't work, hopefully it's better. Thanks everyone, feel free to review! **_


	19. Ride the Lightning

"You're really not very good at this," Lt. Zara chided, handing me a fresh phaser cartridge. "Not saying that to be mean, but seriously…"

"I know, I know. Maybe if the target would stop moving, I could hit it!"

She snorted.

"That would defeat the purpose, Danville. Come on, you just need six clean hits to qualify. Let's go!"

I groaned, and quickly changed out the used cartridge for the new one. We had hit some down time with no missions coming in, so the Captain himself ordered me to finish up some qualifications that I lacked, marksmanship being one of them. I'd used a phaser plenty of times, but never once passed the test. If anyone outside of the ship caught me using one anywhere other than a practice range… there would have been hell to pay. Zara restarted the target simulation program, and I tried to get focused. Three horribly timed shots later, I was ready to throw it in.

"Isn't this about the time when some hunky guy comes up behind me and shows me how to shoot? Why is this not happening?"

"Well, I could get someone to do that for you… but I don't think anyone wants to get punched in the face."

I laughed. Then I realized that I hadn't told her, or anyone, what had happened.

"Wait, what? How do you know about that?"

"I saw Lt. Steele's face, then your hand… I put two and two together. What happened?"

"Nothing, it was stupid."

"Was it?"

I tried to tune her out, and to finish the simulation. The goddamn target just would not cooperate with me- shooting was _not _my thing. I fired, and this time something glorious happened, the target lit up red!

"Oh my god, did I get it?"

"That you did. Now keep going, five more to go."

I missed, again. The excitement that had flared up was quickly extinguished. Several more misses in, Zara was clearly getting fed up.

"What were you feeling when you got the hit? Right _before, _rather."

"I don't know… frustration? Anger?"

"So, get back in that mood."

"I can't just turn it on or off… I'm frustrated, but it's not the helpful kind!"

"Tell me what happened, then, with Steele."

Miss.

"It was a mistake. I gave some signals off, apparently, and they were read wrong."

Miss.

"Like what, flirting with him?"

"No," Hit. "He threw one of those fluffy things at me. I was not in the mood, so I stormed out of engineering. Apparently that was a sign to follow me out."

Hit.

"He tried to kiss me on the turbolift."

"How romantic. And you didn't want that?"

Miss. I stopped firing for a moment to get myself focused.

"No. Not after that whole incident with _Ivers _and that bullshit."

"True."

"The problem is, I kissed back. But I didn't want to. So I hit him."

Now that I said it out loud, I felt that my reaction was completely immature. I aimed the phaser again, and took a steadying deep breath.

"So if you don't like him, is there someone else you were thinking of?"

I fired ten consecutive shots, the first four missed… the last six were dead on.

"I don't know. Maybe. Are we done here?"

"Yes, you qualified. Good job."

I nodded thanks, and saw myself out.

"And Danville,"

I turned my head.

"If you feel strongly enough about someone that you're willing to knock down someone else… you should probably make a move. Just my advice."

My head was spinning as I left to return to my quarters- I didn't know what I was feeling, or what my frustration was all about, but I knew I wanted it to stop.

* * *

We had been in orbit around a planet called Phaedus IV for over a day when I reported to the bridge for my shift. I quickly learned that communications and transporters were both offline, so that set up what I would be doing all day… a lot of nothing, and a little scanning for possibilities of getting around whatever was affecting them. Tremblay filled me in that two newcomers were on board, but who they were was unknown to her. The clincher was, Phaedus was not supposed to be a technologically advanced planet so having people on board was more than a little bit strange.

"Who's got the con right now?" I asked, observing the fact that there were no senior officers on the bridge. Nobody was really doing much of anything. I guess it was going to be one of those days.

"McCoy was in charge, but left as soon as he heard the Captain returned… So nobody."

"Party on the bridge!" I whispered.

It was anything but a party, as we sat in boredom for some time. I looked up at the sound of the turbolift doors opening, hoping it was someone to relieve me or even the captain. It wasn't either- I'd never seen these people in my life. An older man, longish grey hair and an old, beaten up command uniform, accompanied by a blond chick that looked somewhat Cardassian.

"Can I help you?" Chekov was the first to stand up and confront them. When they came onto the bridge without asking permission, we all knew something wasn't right. Of course, everything happened too fast to react. "I am afraid that without the keptin's permission, I cannot allow you to-"

Blue flashes and shrieks filled the air. I jumped out of my seat, one part of my brain telling me to run, the other to stand and fight. I caught the eye of the man just as I decided to go for the turbolift- his expression remained impassive, even friendly, as he pulled the trigger.

Coming to consciousness was a slow process, and my mind and body were not syncing up; I had been hit by a phaser a few times in training, but never on full stun. My thoughts were a little disjointed, but I was regaining my senses at least; my body wasn't so much numb as it was completely pins and needles. I managed to open my eyes a crack, but that was the extent of my movement. In my line of vision I could see the chair I had been sitting in prior, dimly lit by the red flood lights- the power must be out. A pair of booted feet stepped over me, and someone sat down at my station.

"Damn it, all systems are down!"

"April-!" A female voice warned.

Another phaser bolt went off a few feet above me, and I couldn't even flinch. The man leapt aside.

"It is over, April. Surrender" Spock! "If you think that you can reach your phaser before I fire again, you are welcome to try."

"I am trying to save an entire people, Spock! This is just _one ship!"_

"Yeah, my ship!"

There was another phaser shot, and the sound of a full-grown man crashing down.

"How long were you going to stand there _talking _to him, Spock?"

"My next shot was imminent, Captain."

I tried wiggling my fingers, tired of lying helpless, and managed to get my left index finger to move; progress. I had to shut my eyes as they were suddenly filled with the brightness of the bridge.

"The lights!" Kirk exclaimed.

"It would appear ship functions have been restored." Spock confirmed.

"Scotty, I love you!" Kirk said. If I could laugh, I would have.

"_I love you too, sir. Can we go home now?" _Scotty's voice came from the communicator.

I could hear Tremblay groaning beside me, and saw her moving a little. I couldn't even make noise yet- it wasn't fair!

"Computer, confirm voiceprint command. Captain Kirk, James T."

"_Voiceprint command confirmed, Captain."_

"Shields up!"

"_Enterprise, prepare to be boarded by emissaries of the Klingon Empire! Any resistance will be considered an act of war between our peoples!"_

What the _hell _did I miss? Were we in Klingon territory, now? Had we been hit by a Klingon ship, is that why the power had gone out? And who was April- it couldn't be _the _Robert April, could it?

"I'm not looking for war with _anyone_, Commander. We ready, Spock?"

"Ready, Captain."

"Then get us out of here."

There was the unmistakable feeling of jumping to warp, which felt a little strange yet, soothing from my place on the deck of the bridge.

"Bones- we need a medical team up here. The entire bridge crews been stunned."

"_On our way."_

Tremblay had managed to sit up, and I could feel her nudging me. I finally made a noise, which was more whimper than anything. She grabbed me under my arms and pulled me to a sitting position. I couldn't even hold my head up, and managed to smack the back of it on the console she leaned me against.

"Sorry!" She gasped. I didn't care I barely felt it.

McCoy appeared in front of me, checking my vitals. I watched under half closed lids, unable to do much else.

"She got hit at point blank. Is she going to be okay?" Tremblay asked.

"Looks it. She might be out of it for a while, but otherwise fine. How are you feeling?"

"Fine. Not my first rodeo. Who is that guy?"

"That would be Captain Robert April. Yes, _the _Captain April."

"He's alive?"

"Apparently so."

McCoy was replaced by Lawson, who sat next to me.

"Who's Captain April?" He whispered to Tremblay.

If I could have, I would have slapped him upside the head. Even I knew that.

"He commanded one of the old _Enterprises_. He went missing and was presumed dead. Don't you know your history?"

"History was at 0700, do you honestly think I made every class?"

Tremblay laughed.

"Well this has been an interesting day. I'm going to my quarters- do you need help with her?"

"No, I'll manage. Going to wait until she's somewhat more functional."

I don't know how much time passed before I could finally move my head on my own, but the bridge was slowly coming back to life. Chekov was still in about the same state as I was, and finally walked out with assistance.

"I hate phasers." I finally groaned. My head was pounding now.

"I thought you loved them, weren't you all excited the other day about qualifying? I seem to remember that."

"I redact that statement."

"Do you think you can walk out of here?"

"Probably, just don't let me fall on my face. I can't take the embarrassment."

"I won't let you fall."

He gave me his hand, and I got up on legs that felt like jello. He steered me to the turbo lift, and we got on. I danced around, trying to get myself feeling more normal, but the pins and needles persisted.

"Am I going to feel like this forever?"

"Yes. Now stop dancing, you look ridiculous."

The turbolift stopped at my deck, and a moment of sheer stupidity made me hit the hold lift button.

"What are you doing?" Lawson asked.

"I don't know," I really didn't. I turned and looked him right in his eyes. "If I do something, you're not going to punch me in the face- right?"

"Do what?"

Yeah, what? My moment of bravery fizzled away as soon as it struck- I blamed the phaser blast, clearly it had knocked out my judgment along with myself.

"Nothing, I'm a little out of it." I pressed the button again, and the doors swished open. "I'm going to my quarters now."

I walked off, and got about four strides in before I stumbled, and had to grab the wall not to go down.

"You need some help there?" He called from the lift.

"No, I'm good!

I made it to my quarters, and dove directly onto my bed. What the hell had I just tried to do? It had kind of worked for Steele on me, but seriously- what was _wrong _with me?

"Goddamn phasers. Goddamn turbolift."

* * *

A/N: Hey all, I'm going to try to post another chapter before I leave in 2 weeks for basic training for the USCG, but I'm a little crazy busy! I'm a little bit scared to death, but excited. So if I don't post… I'll be back in October. Please leave reviews; I haven't had one in forever (hell yes, I'm begging!) Are any of my original readers still reading? Because all the chapters prior to this have been heavily edited, I realized my writing sucked… not much better, but definitely an improvement!


	20. Breathing Underwater

One more mission. One more stop on our short tour around the galaxy, and then we were homebound. There was only one slight, little problem.

"Sorry, did I hear you correctly?" I sputtered, wondering if my chief engineer had one too many sips of whiskey this morning. "We're taking the Enterprise underwater?"

"Your hearing's fine, Ensign, its the captain's mind we ought te be concerned about."

"But- is that even possible? Its designed for space travel, not... Playing submarine."

"I guess we're gonna find out soon enough. I'm puttin' ye in charge of damage control- there shouldn't be anything too catastrophic, but I'm not sure just how watertight the outer doors are. You will report directly te me."

"Aye, aye sir." I muttered, reluctantly accepting responsibility for anything that would be going wrong.

If the primary goal of our mission wasn't dangerous enough, this took the icing on the cake for the crazy-stunt-of-the-day. This whole thing had bad idea written all over it.

The descent to the planet went smoother than i had expected. Our shields kept any burning-up at bay as we went through the atmosphere. I instinctively held my breath as the bottom levels of the ship, including where I was now standing, plunged under the surface of the alien ocean. The rest of the ship soon went completely under. I half expected alarms to be blaring in every direction, and water leaking in from every single hatch, or our hull collapsing inward from the pressure- but everything seemed to be as normal. I never would have thought that a star ship could do this, yet there we were.

We had made it underwater just fine, but it wasn't long before I was running around the ship directing my fellow technicians to fix the abnormalities in our systems that the exposure to salt-water was no doubt causing. It was going to be a long night.

"How much longer are we going to be down here?" I finally asked an exasperated Scotty, nine hours into our underwater excursion, while making my latest report to him.

"Hopefully not much longer, they have a very narrow window of opportunity to stop that eruption. I would like to get this ship out of the water before some giant shark decides to take a bite out of a nacelle."

"Giant shark? Should I be concerned?"

"I'm just speculating- who knows whats out there."

And i thought Klingons were the only thing we had to worry about, now sea monsters were a strong possibility. I didn't even want to think about the volcano miles above us that was our main reason for being here.  
'This ship is safe, this ship is safe...'

Uhura and Sulu were the first to come back. I gathered my damage control team and rushed to clean up the mess of water and sea-life that came in when the access port was opened. Lawson and some of his science department shipmates came down to collect the unfortunate fish that had managed to come in. I tried to help a rather pretty looking fish that had decided to flop around in a valiant effort to escape. Lawson saved him in a specimen container after i failed to secure it.

"Don't hurt him!" I begged.

"Already attached? You just met," He smirked.

I rolled my eyes, going to find the proper supplies for my team to pick up the water mess.

"Get back to work," I ordered him, slipping on a piece of seaweed and gracefully recovering. "Standby for more specimens."

Kirk and McCoy were expected any moment. No sooner had we finished vacuuming up the water from the deck in the hatch, the alarm came from another access hatch one deck down. Tremblay came to find me half way through cleaning up the second minor flood, and I was ecstatic to finally be relieved of my duty. However, she had more tasks for me to assist with.

"Spock was just beamed back. He almost didn't make it, they got him literally at the last second. We're pulling out of the ocean now."

"Okay, what do I need to do?"

"We need all hands to get thrusters at full capacity as fast as possible. Unfortunately our captain drew the attention of the natives. Its pretty unavoidable, they are going to see us come out of the water no matter what we do. Might as well do it quickly and not give them time to dwell on it."

"So... Prime directive doesn't apply anymore?"

"In this case, its gone out the window. Come on, lets get these thrusters going."

* * *

My shore-leave was well deserved. My mom had sent me the access code to her apartment in San Francisco a while back, so I had somewhere to stay at least. She was back home in Maine, having just returned from a short mission on the ship she had unsuccessfully tried to get me transferred to.  
I had intended to go to the apartment alone, but then Lawson decided to tag along with me on my walk from the shuttle hanger- I didn't object.

"Inviting yourself over?"

"You looked like you needed company." He said, taking one of my heavier bags from me.

"Thanks."

"No problem. Where are we going?"

"My mom has an apartment in the Command housing."

"Sounds fancy. Is she around?"

"No, she's in Maine. Place is all mine."

The apartment was actually quite nice. It was all open, just a bedroom, a small living area with a couch and two chairs separating it from the kitchenette, and a bathroom. The entire back wall was a huge window looking out over the bay.

"Not too bad," I remarked, dumping my bags on the ground. I made a beeline for the refrigerator. Mom had left some food, but most importantly- "hey, look- wine!"

I popped open the one that had already been opened, and took a swig. I sputtered and coughed.

"That tastes like shit!"

Lawson grabbed it from me and tried it.

"Nothing wrong with it."

"I guess my taste buds just aren't pretentious enough."

I took the bottle back, and kept drinking it anyway. Lawson shook his head.

"How about we go outside, do something fun?" He suggested.

"Like what?"

"I don't know, something other than sit around and get drunk. We've been stuck on a star ship for months, don't you want to get out in the fresh air?"

He had a point. I had been planning on catching up on sleep and, yeah, maybe getting a little tipsy to shake things up. Maybe getting out was more important.

"Fine, but this better be worth my time."

I had never really done very much in downtown San Francisco, other than shopping with my mom on one occasion and that one night on the town I could barely remember... Lawson seemed to know his way around, and I put my full faith in him that we would have a good time.  
Our afternoon was spent doing the most touristy things we could possibly do- a trolley ride for starters, then a trip to the aquarium, and finally at sunset a 'haunted history tour' of Alcatraz prison. By the time we got off the ferry to the mainland, I was exhausted- and I refused to admit it was from being freaked the hell out by our little ghost tour. We got back to the apartment around 2100, still laughing yet tired.

"That was fun!" I yawned, throwing myself down on the sofa.

"Did I deliver, or what?"

"Yes, you delivered. Speaking of delivery- food?"

"Pizza? Chinese?"

"You're really going to make me decide?"

"Right, Chinese it is." He whipped out his communicator and stepped into the kitchen to call.

I turned on the TV, and was immediately accosted with a graphic news report from London. The reporter stood in front of a smoky scene, filled with emergency vehicles and people running back and forth. Most of them were Starfleet.

_"The death toll is now up to 24 and still more unaccounted for. Starfleet tells us that the bomber was an employee here, but they do not believe he acted alone. We will provide the latest information as it becomes available to us."_

This could not be good. Why was I just hearing about this?

"Lawson!" I called, freaking out a little.

He finished the call and came back in the room.

"What?"

"There was a bombing in London!" I read the ticker at the bottom of the screen. "Kelvin Memorial Archive. My mom sometimes goes there, for meetings. Why would anyone bomb that place?"

"I don't know. Shit, that's bad."

"Do you know anyone that works there?"

"No, actually. But I've been by there, never inside... It really doesn't make much sense for a bombing target."

I got my communicator out and called up my mom. If anyone knew anything about it, it would be her.

"Commander O'Malley here,"

"Mom! What's going on in London?"

"If you're watching the news, that's pretty much all I know. I'm a little busy right now, I'm going to have to talk to you later."

"Should I be concerned?"

"Yes, but you're safe where you are- you're back in San Francisco, right?"

"Yes,"

"Good. I have to go. Love you."

"Love you too."

She disconnected, leaving me feeling a little dejected.

"Nothing?" Lawson asked.

"Of course not, Starfleet Intelligence owns her. If she knew anything she probably wouldn't tell me."

We speculated over dinner and a bottle of wine, trying to figure out what the point in bombing the archive could be. All theories just lead to more questions, and we eventually gave up thinking about it. Trying to understand why evil-doers do what they do is like trying to breathe underwater- you just can't.

* * *

A/N: Sorry for my lateness in posting. I've been very, very busy! I graduated boot camp at the end of December- that was pure hell, of course, but I'm proud to be a member of the US Coast Guard Reserve! I'm loving it, thankfully- the constant torture was worth it. I just got a new laptop on Black Friday, unfortunately a week before I left for Cape May I murdered my Macbook (RIP). I'm diligently working on more of this story, I promise! I hope some of you are still with me, I know it's been a long time since I've been on here!


	21. Wake Me Up

I awoke to the red glow of sunlight in my eyes, and blinked the sleep out of my eyes as I sat up. My head was foggy and dully aching from consuming too much wine the night before, but the warmth of the sun was invigorating. It was a beautiful day to be on earth.

The first thing I noticed upon getting my ass out of bed was that Lawson was gone- I didn't remember him leaving... but then again, I also didn't remember going to bed. Had I fallen asleep when he was still here? That was rude of me, if so- not to mention embarrassing. The fact that I was still wearing what I'd been wearing the night before was pretty good evidence that that was in fact what happened. It seemed like we were always taking turns taking care of each other when inebriated- if I didn't know better, I'd think we were a couple alcoholics. I made sure to grab clean clothes, and went to take a shower. I probably still smelled like engineering, for all I knew.

I walked out into the kitchen, wringing the water out of my hair with a towel, and screamed in surprise as I nearly ran into an intruder. My heart was racing, fight or flight reflexes kicking in, and still was after I saw who it was. I did not like to be surprised.

"Holy _shit, _mom!"

"Oh, that's so sweet. Nice to see you, too."

"You're lucky I didn't drop-kick you! You can't sneak in on people like that!"

"I'd like to see you try, dear daughter. It's my apartment, I can come and go as I please." She smirked, handing me a cup of coffee from Dunkin'- one of the only things around San Francisco that felt like home.

"How did you get here so fast?"

"It was this strange thing called a transporter- ever been in one?"

"I'm not in the mood for sarcasm. Thanks for the coffee."

She picked up the now empty bottle of wine from the coffee table.

"Guess you had a rough night. Did you drink this by yourself?"

"No, Lawson was here."

She raised an eyebrow, and I could see her subtly glance towards the bed, which I had left disheveled.

"The doctor? He's cute. Very intelligent- I like him."

"Yes, he is. He's a good friend."

"Friend is changeable-"

"Anyway," I interrupted. Sometimes my mom could be very intrusive. "What brings you here?"

"I have a meeting to go to later tonight. But, until then- do you have any plans?"

I spent the day with my mother, enjoying her company, but really wishing I was with someone else. She had some good stories about her adventures as first officer of the USS Enforcer under Captain Mendoza, and I exchanged our latest adventures on the Enterprise, plus or minus a few details. As exciting as some of the things my mom was doing sounded, I was glad I made the decision to stay on the Enterprise- we had just as much fun, if not more. We had a late lunch at a restaurant looking over the bay, enjoying fresh grilled seafood and cocktails (mine being virgin, to my utter disappointment). After the meal, we sat there on the patio a little longer, enjoying the sunset and the quiet- it was pretty deserted being a Monday night.

"I'm thinking about getting a divorce."

I choked on my drink, not quite sure I heard her correctly. We had been having such a nice evening, and now-

"What?" I couldn't disguise the trembling in my voice.

"Sorry, I know it's not what you want to hear. I haven't told anyone yet."

"Why are you even considering it? What the hell, mom! This isn't something you're supposed to discuss with your daughter!"

"You're an adult, Allison. I thought I should at least give you the service of mentioning it. Nothing's even finalized."

"Mom, you can't just cancel when you don't feel like subscribing anymore! He's your husband, and my dad."

"Okay, sorry I brought it up. It should be between me and him. I shouldn't have brought you into this."

"Yeah, you shouldn't. I'm not your friend, I'm you're daughter. And if you're going to ruin your life, I don't want to be any part of your mistake." I got up, grabbing my jacket and angrily kicking in my chair. "Thanks for dinner, enjoy you're meeting."

"Ally-" Her voice was drowned out by the sound from inside the restaurant. I flashed an in-genuine smile at the hostess that wished me a good night.

I don't know how long I walked the streets for, fuming, but eventually I ended up back in Starfleet territory. I sat down on one of the park benches on the quad of the academy, and took out my communicator. My mom had tried to call a couple times, but I was going to give her time to think over what she had done before I talked to her again. _The child becomes the mother..._

"Lawson here."

"Are you tired of my face yet?"

"No, of course not. What's up? You don't sound too happy."

"Do you want to go for a walk?"

"Sure, where are you?"

I gave him my location, and waited for him, still fuming.

* * *

We walked and talked for a couple hours, and I vented while he listened patiently, giving advice when due. That's what I liked about him- when I had first met him he was kind of cocky, basically a total asshole. The more we were around each-other, the more I realized that was just his sense of humor- dry, sarcastic. I guess I could be like that, too. There was a lull in the conversation after a while, where we just walked. He stopped when we got to one of the popular viewing spots by the Golden Gate Bridge, and we stood silently looking out over the water. We were the only two people there, and it was kind of nice- the lights on the water were beautiful tonight.

"Hey, look-" He nodded toward the bridge, and I followed his gaze to a spot where the overhead lights were out.

"Is that-?" I remembered a time at the academy from my brief stint there.

"Guess thy forgot what happened last year."

I laughed. If there was one thing Starfleet Cadets didn't do, that was follow rules. The breeze over the water picked up, and I shivered as it hit me. Lawson noticed, and reached out an arm to pull me in close. The butterflies in my stomach didn't even have a chance to flap their wings twice before his hand was in my hair, lips against mine. It was a few moments before we resurfaced for air, and I felt myself blushing immediately. I discreetly pumped my fist in the air in celebration. I'd never had a kiss quite like that, one that made me feel weak at the knees and light-headed. I nearly stumbled, but he grabbed my waist to steady me. He kissed me again, and we stayed that way for a while.

"Sorry," He said.

"For what?"

"Come on, I'll walk you home. We don't want to be here when the cops bust those cadets, now, do we?"

We walked back towards Starfleet Headquarters, en route to my mom's apartment complex. I couldn't stop smiling, and Lawson laughed at me when he saw my face.

"I would have kissed you long ago if I knew it would have made you stop scowling!"

"I don't scowl!"

"Well, you look happy now. I'm glad."

"Isn't this when you tell me I have bautiful eyes?" I teased. I wasn't one for romantic crap, but I was definitely feeling something for him. A Vulcan would say it was human hormones, reacting to the need to mate or something along those parameters.

"Don't get ahead of yourself, _Ensign._"

"You better watch yourself, _Lieutenant_. I may be a lowly engineer, but I've got moves."

I realized my innuendo not a second after saying it, and panicked.

"I mean, I'm pretty good at kicking ass."

He laughed at my uneasiness.

All flirtation came to a screaming halt as the unmistakeable sound of gunfire cropped up not even a block away. We both looked up. It was the Headquarters building, and even from where we were a small jump-ship was visible, shooting mercilessly into the windows of one of the upper floors. We didn't even have time to comment on it before both of us were running to the scene. People were naturally flocking there, gaping up above.

When we arrived on-scene, San Francisco Police and Starfleet security were already attempting to clear the mob out of the way of falling debris. What I wanted to know was how an armored jump-ship got this close to Headquarters, as I seemed to remember there being a strict no-fly zone around the building itself. I followed Lawson without question to the main entrance, dodging debris and falling glass as we maneuvered our way through the growing crowd. A San Francisco Police officer stepped in front of me, putting his hands out in a back off gesture.

"Miss, you're going to need to go back, this area is not secure."

"I'm Starfleet, I'm going in. He's a doctor, they need us in there." I demanded, pulling out my ID card. I seldom ever had to use it, thanks to Starfleet being well equipped with retinal and finger print scanners.

"Go ahead. Be careful in there."

Alarms were sounding inside, and emergency vehicles were arriving in droves outside. I felt strange going into Headquarters out of uniform, but I wasn't the only one. Just as firefighters will run into a burning building without question, we would run into a firefight to save our shipmates. Security was taking control of first responders- I flashed my ID to the officer in charge, and he put me with a team of San Francisco firemen while Lawson was whisked away with a medical team. Everything was happening very fast, but it all felt like a long time. There was screaming and a loud, resounding crash outside, and I turned to see the jump-ship broken up in the street. I could only hope that they had been able to clear the area and nobody was laying under the wreckage, dead.

Lieutenant Commander Speece, head of damage control and one of my engineering instructors from the academy, was leading our team. He recognized me, even out of uniform, and brought me up front to stand with him.

"We're going in once Commander Tygue gives us the go ahead. There is a lot of debris, as well as casualties. If anyone can walk out of here, get them out. If anyone is unconscious, or trapped under wreckage we need approval from one of the medics before attempting to move them. Understood?"

Tygue's approval came, and we piled the small crew into the turbo-lift. When we came out on the floor, I immediately doubted my ability to handle the situation. Sparks were flying from exposed wiring, people were moaning in pain, there was glass and debris everywhere. It looked like a bomb had gone off. The medical team came in behind us, and we escorted them in, trying to find a safe route through the wreckage. The first person I came across, an older Commander, was definitely dead; his eyes gazed soullessly up at the ceiling, blood running into them from a ghastly had wound. I had to move on before I froze up and got sick.

I helped usher those who could walk out on their own, out into the turbo-lift to be taken to the main level. It didn't take long for me to realize that this had been some sort of meeting of the Starfleet brass- Captains, Admirals...

"Miss Danville?"

I turned to see Captain Mendoza limping towards me. I'd only met him a couple times, but I looked enough like my mom that it was probably hard not to remember me.

"Sir, are you alright?"

"I'm fine. I don't know where your mother is, I lost track of her in the shooting."

"She's here?" I couldn't disguise the panic in my voice. It was all making sense to me now- this was the meeting she had come for. When a big event, such as a terrorist attack, happened, all the brass was supposed to meet together at the same time... same place. How could I have not put two and two together?

"She must have gotten out."

Yeah, she would have if she was smart, but knowing her she wouldn't have left without getting her captain out, too.

"I'm going to look for her. Can you get to the turbo-lift alone?"

"I'm good," He stuck out his leg, and I could see a chunk of glass protruding from his calf, a dark stain all over his dress slacks. "Just a flesh-wound."

There was a good reason I wasn't in the medical field. My dinner threatened to resurface. I wanted this to be over as soon as possible, because the blood and the bodies was not helping my rising anxiety. Now that I knew my mom had been in here, I couldn't focus on the job at hand. Everywhere I looked I expected to see her staring lifelessly at me, just as the first man I'd found had been. I absentmindedly moved debris out of the way, most of which was still burning hot to the touch or too heavy for someone of my size to be lifting alone. I didn't care, all I cared about was finding my mom, preferably alive. I hadn't exactly left her at the restaurant on good terms, and if she was dead... I knew I wouldn't be able to handle it. I walked by Captain Kirk, hunched over a body, but I couldn't bring myself to do more than glance. My heart wrenched as I saw it was Admiral Pike. I didn't know him well, but he was part of my chain of command- and from what I knew of him, a really great man. All I could focus on was my own flesh and blood, grieving for others would have to wait.

My worst fears came to light moments later. I could see her curly, dark blond hair, made almost black with blood, and my sense of professionalism turned right off. There was broken glass all over her, and I could barely feel it biting into me as I checked her over for injuries. She was breathing, but not strong enough for my liking. There was a dark burn-mark in the material of her uniform, over her chest, and I deducted that she'd been shot with a phaser blast. I didn't know if that was her primary concern or the head wound, but I didn't dare to move her in case I do her any more damage. I was not a medic, and I would just screw up anything if I tried.

"I need some help over here!" I screamed, clutching onto her uniform as though if I let go of her she would slip away. Her face was pale, and she was still- way too still. "Come on, mom, wake up."

A civilian paramedic came over, and began checking her vitals. He looked at me like I was in the way.

"I can take it from here, miss."

"I'm not leaving her," I snapped.

"I need room to work, I'm sorry." He glanced up at someone coming up behind me. "Get her out of here?"

"I said I'm not leaving her, she's my mother!"

"If we can't stabilize her and get her over to medical than she's not going to get any better." The paramedic explained, as another joined him.

The security officer behind me grabbed my arm, gently, and I gave up. He walked me out to the turbo-lift, and I went down to join the others that just couldn't handle the pressure. This is what they meant when someone was emotionally compromised- when someone you love is in danger, you can't maintain composure. I didn't know what to do with myself, so I sat on the ground, back against the wall, and stared at my bloody hands. It was a mix of my own blood from fresh cuts that I had only just noticed, and my mom's- I couldn't think of anything more unsanitary than having someones blood mix with your own, but I also couldn't bring myself to care. My mom could be dying, and here I was, helpless to do anything but wait.

* * *

A/N: Yes, I know the kiss was a long time coming. Hope you all enjoyed, more coming soon!


	22. Murphy's Law

I sat with my mom all night, holding her hand, wanting her to wake up so I could say sorry. For the way I acted, for all the time I missed with her growing up, and then being away with Starfleet myself while she had her own missions. Her condition wasn't good at all; her heart had stopped en route to medical, and had to be jump-started three times by the time they had her stabilized. I was lucky I had missed that scene, as I probably would have lost it.

"Where are you, mom?" I whispered, grabbing her cold hand in mine, running my thumb over the back of her hand. They were bony and prominently veined, precisely like mine. There was so much of her that I saw in me, and so much in me I didn't see in her at all. "I could really use you right now."

In a perfect world she would have woken up at the sound of my voice and all would be well again. She just lay there, pale and still, oblivious to my presence. The Tellarite doctor told me she would be out for a while, due to pressure and bleeding on her brain, but her body was working so hard to repair the cardiac damage as well, that it was up in the air when she would regain consciousness. If it weren't for the quick action of the paramedics and the skilled doctors of Starfleet medical, there was a good chance she would have already died.

"Please... just be okay. I can't lose you, too.

I didn't even realize I'd fallen asleep until someone was stroking my hair. My first thought was that it was comforting, but then as I came to full awareness it just felt weird- nobody ever pet me like I was a dog, and I didn't really appreciate it. I snapped awake, looking around for whoever disturbed my rest. I was still in medical, still in that uncomfortable chair, still next to my mom. Who was still unconscious.

"Sorry, didn't mean to wake you." A familiar voice said from behind me.

"Dad!" I all but threw myself in his arms. I immediately started bawling like a child. I never got the chance to melt down, being around senior command staff and having to keep myself in control at all times.

"How long have you been here?" He asked.

"I don't know, what time is it?"

"Just after 7 AM."

"Guess I was here all night then."

"They didn't kick you out?"

That didn't surprise me. I had an in with Lawson and McCoy, they both knew I didn't follow directions very well and wouldn't have bothered to let security kick me out. I let go of my step-dad so he could sit with mom. He didn't want to steal my spot, but I insisted. He'd come all the way from Maine on short notice, and deserved to be with his wife. He kissed her on the lips, and that was enough to break my heart- to think that the last conversation I had had with her, she was talking divorce. Seeing how much he loved her, cared for her... I hadn't seen both of them in the same room in years. It hurt to think that he didn't know, and that she couldn't see him right now. I had to get out of here- if I stayed, I would let something slip, and I just couldn't do that to him right now. I pulled out my communicator and texted Lawson.

_Come save me. Awkward family moment. Rm 242._

I sat there, watching the clock on the wall, trying not to watch my mom and stepdad. Thankfully, Lawson was there in less than 5 minutes.

"Sorry to interrupt," He said, walking in. "Ally- we need to report to our shuttle in an hour. Enterprise is taking off."

"Oh, shit- so soon?" I played along.

"Go ahead, Allison. I will keep you posted."

I shared a teary goodbye with my stepdad, and kissed my mom's cold cheek. I felt bad lying, but it was not a good idea for me to be around them. I was going to have to commit to Lawson's lie, too. We walked out together, and I finally spoke when I knew we were far enough away.

"What the hell, I didn't mean get me away from them for a long time!"

"I wasn't making that up. We really do need to report to our shuttle."

"Really? Shore leave isn't up, though."

"Emergency crew re-activation. Captain Kirk is back in command. We've got to go."

* * *

The engine room was a little hectic, to say the least, when I got back to the ship- we were all called up at short notice, so nobody was in a good mood or knew exactly what was going on. I reported to Lt. Spires, who looked like steam was about to blow out of his ears.

"I'm here, where do you want me?" I offered, hoping he wouldn't take any of his obvious pent up frustration out on me.

"Just stand-by. Scotty is having a conniption about those torpedoes they're loading on-board. It's sort of holding us up."

"What torpedoes?" We had never had torpedoes on-board the ship. Phase cannons, yes... but no torpedoes.

"You didn't see the huge pallet in the cargo bay?"

I had, but I didn't know what it was having never seen torpedoes of that sort.

"Nah, I did. What's his problem with them?"

"They're new technology, and all specs are classified. There's no telling how safe they are on board. There's over fifty of them, from what I've heard."

"72," Lt. Tremblay said, clapping Spires on the shoulder as she went by. "Enough to destroy a good sized city, at least."

I wasn't even going to get into a discussion regarding our need for the torpedoes. I wasn't against weapons, lord knows we needed them thanks to some not-so-friendly neighbors in the galaxy... but 72 advanced torpedoes seemed a bit excessive for a ship like the Enterprise.

"Danville, I need someone for a core inspect, would you be a dear?" Tremblay asked.

"Anything for you," I said, and reluctantly followed her.

* * *

Everything looked good and we were as ready to go as we could be on such short notice. The ship was fine, but all of us crew were a little scatterbrained and there was a lot of tension in the air. Chekov came running up to me, looking very out of sorts- and it wasn't just because he was wearing a red shirt.

"Is ze core inspect done?"

"Yes," I said. "What's this? Are you defecting to Engineering?"

"Ze keptin made me chief. Are we clear for warp?"

"Yes, good to go," I was so confused. "Chief?"

"No time to explain." He pulled out his communicator and gave the bridge the go-ahead.

We took off moments later, the deck just barely humming as warp kicked into gear. I stuck with Chekov, just in case he needed help with his new position- he was a genius, but he didn't have as much time logged in down here as I did and honestly I was a little apprehensive about him being our current chief. Why hadn't Kirk picked me? Or Even Spires, or Tremblay? They were higher ranking than Chekov, too! I suppose Kirk had his reasons. Or he was losing it. Kirk's voice came over the ship-wide intercom.

"Attention, crew of the _Enterprise. _This is the captain speaking. As most of you know by now, by official channels or otherwise, Christopher Pike, the former captain of this ship and our friend, is dead." There was a moment of silence before he continued. Word traveled fast, but I'm sure a lot of the crew were probably inebriated or in other states of disarray the night before and missed the news. "The man who killed him has fled our system and is hiding on the Klingon homeworld- somewhere he believes we are unwilling to go. We're on our way there now."

Oh, no. I did not sign up for a suicide mission. We were so fucked, beyond a doubt.

"Per Admiral Marcus, it is essential that our presence go undetected. Tensions between the Federation and the Klingon Empire have been high from the time of first contact and have in no way subsided since. Any direct provocation could lead to all out war. Each of us should strive to see that does not happen. We will carry out our mission in secret and as swiftly as possible, before our presence can be noted and our ship identified. These are our orders. All right. Let's go get this sonuvabitch."

I smiled at that- there was the Captain Kirk I knew! I got back into my old routine, checking instruments and power levels, monitoring the readouts of the shipboard systems- everything was going beautifully. Maybe I would even be able to sneak off and take a nap before we got into any sort of bad situation with the Klingons.

"So much for shore-leave," A very hung over looking Lt. Steele grumbled, joining me at the station I was monitoring things from. "I woke up in a bathtub this morning. And now we're off to Kronos? Could this get any worse?"

I laughed, and he winced.

"Haven't we all been there?"

"Where? Kronos?"

I rolled my eyes.

"I don't need your judgment now, Danville. I need coffee."

As if commiserating with Steele's misery, the ship came to a sudden complete stop. It wasn't strong enough to knock anyone into anything or cause mass chaos, but one second we were moving, and the next we were dead still. Smoke was issuing out of parts of the warp core, and I sprung into action, grabbing a fire extinguisher. With several of us armed with extinguishers, the small amount of flame that had been present was out in seconds. Fortunately my training had prepared me to act, then panic. We all worked as one cohesive unit to figure out what the hell had just happened.

"Automatic Emergency Shutdown," Lt. Spires announced to Chekov. "Something wrong with the core."

"Can you tell what it is?" Chekov asked. He looked worried, but remained calm... which is better than I could say for myself.

"No, not yet. Bad enough to trigger the automatics, apparently," Spires explained. "It's going to take a while to figure out what the hell went wrong, probably just as long as it will take us to get her going again. And we can't override the shutdown until we find what caused it."

"_Mr. Chekov, did you break my ship?"_

"Sorry... sorry, sir!"

I got busy running scans, trying to find something I may have missed. There was no way I could have missed anything, I did a full inspection on everything. We had a few more minutes of peace before alarms started going off. The red lights and error messages popping up on my readouts were not very encouraging. If my blood pressure hadn't been high before, it was probably through the roof now.

"Danville, I thought you did an inspect?" Tremblay snapped.

"Yes, I did." I said replied, just as tersely.

"Did you miss something?"

"No, I was very thorough, thank you."

It didn't take long for all of us to be extremely on edge and snippy. This was not a good situation, judging by the fact that we were on impulse power going through Klingon space. If we were detected... I couldn't even begin to ponder that thought, there was too much work to be done.

It took quite a few hours to isolate what was wrong with the warp core, and even when we had found what it was we didn't know how the hell it happened in the first place. I was still so pissed that Tremblay, one of my closest friends on this ship, was trying to blame me for not finding a problem- there was nothing to indicate anything was wrong, _nothing._ I started to doubt myself, wondering if maybe I had spaced out, worrying too much about my mom and all the shit that was going on... and that just made me angrier.

There was a lot going on ship-wide that I was missing out on, but occasionally someone would update us techs who were working our asses off to get the damn warp core going. John Harrison had been captured after a fight involving Klingons, and was currently in our brig. It took a lot of willpower not to go down there and kick his ass to kingdom-come; it helped that I was neck deep in repair work. We were still crawling along on impulse power, and were on edge expecting a Klingon ship to sneak up on us at any moment. I was having a heated discussion with Steele over what to do about a non-functioning conduit when Tremblay excitedly called us over to a viewing screen she was standing by.

"Admiral Marcus? What's he doing on a ship?" Steele asked.

"The question is, what ship _is _that?" I started. The bridge we could see behind the Admiral was beautiful, albeit a little dimly lit, and much newer than the Enterprise.

"Shut up, there's something weird going down!" Tremblay hissed. "Kirk's arguing with Admiral Marcus about some Khan guy... apparently that's Harrison's real name... Aw, shit!"

The feed went out- clearly the bridge didn't want everyone seeing what was going on any longer. I immediately got back to work, now overly curious about what the situation was. And who the hell was Khan and why was he pretending to be John Harrison?

"_Mr. Chekov, can we warp?" _Came Kirk's voice over the intercom some time later. That was not a good sign.

"Sir, we're working on it as hard as we can," Chekov replied. I shot him a furtive glance- if we tried to go to warp, we were pretty much fucked. "There is some functionality, but if we engage it now, we risk further damaging the core."

"_Can we do it or not?" _

"Technically, yes, but I would not adwise it, Keptin! The dangers are multiple and we risk undoing all the difficult repair work that has already been completed."

"_Objections noted,"_

Chekov's face pretty much displayed how I felt. This was just asking for a full meltdown.

"Prepare for warp!" Chekov called, and we got to it.

I had never seen nor heard the warp core this bad. Alarms were all going off again, everything was overheating, all the work we had just done was starting to come undone like buttons on a shirt that was too damn small. Over all the problems that were cropping up, however, the engines kept running, and we were moving at top warp speed. It was now a question of how long we could maintain everything before something major would blow.

Out of nowhere, the ship shuddered violently and the deck lurched. I nearly lost my footing, and to make it worse the lights flickered out. We had some measure of illumination, enough to keep working by, but it was very disconcerting being mostly in the dark. There were shrieking noises as the conduits started burning out- the core was way, way overheated. Coolant was leaking out everywhere, and it was now becoming a game not to come in contact with it. A deafening crackle filled the air, almost like a lightning strike, and we all knew the core had become diss-aligned.

"Shut down ze core! Seal it off!" Chekov ordered. We didn't have to be asked twice.

The ship was rocked again, and I knew before we had official confirmation that it wasn't from the core itself. We were being fired on. Judging by the damage readouts, we were pretty much dead in the water... and there was a good chance some of our crew was, too. A large section of hull had been obliterated, taking a few decks of corridors with it. Shields were gone. Impulse drive was declining rapidly- we were barely moving. There was a very good chance we would not make it home.

* * *

A/N: Got a new job as a security officer, and I work weird hours- so not a lot of time to write! Hoping to get a little more up before the Coast Guard sends me off to more training in California (I'll be right near San Francisco! It's almost like going to Starfleet Academy. Almost. Not really.)! Thanks everyone for your support in this story, much appreciated!


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